Messi and happiness

On July 6, 2021, at 11:16 p.m., the English Liverpool forward, Luis Díaz, beat the Argentine goalkeeper and tied for Colombia in the semifinal of the Copa América at the National Stadium in Brasilia.

As in countless previous games, the cameras follow Messi.

This time

amplified in the silence of the deserted stands due to the pandemic.

Tonight there is

.

Not from a football point of view -in the National Team he has played well, regularly and badly-, but from a

After the Colombian tie and while the second half was consumed, Messi does not wander looking at the floor with his arms dropped, self-absorbed.

The tie bucket, this time,

Tonight Messi shouts, harangues, encourages Lautaro Martínez when he eats a goal, sees Colombia grow and encourages his teammates -

-, and

When the penalties arrive, he scores his and walks towards his goalkeeper, who is waiting on the side:

, he harangues him as he hugs him.

It explodes when Martínez saves the penalty from Yerry Mina, a giant of 1.96 who a while before had celebrated the tie by rehearsing a little dance:

That night the

was born but we still didn't know it.

Messi, maybe, yes.

He had lost six America's Cups and

.

The categorization of individual defeat or victory is unfair in a collective sport, but if we said

then

those of the National Team.

The night of the new Messi added unprecedented data to the statistics.

Emboldened by the confidence of the energetic and winning captain who until then only knew the skies of Catalonia,

Martínez

Messi had never

so much desire to win (it does not mean that he did not have them).

Never had a National Team goalkeeper saved

Could that be coincidence?

Messi was another and the final destination was another.

Four days later and against Brazil -in the same Maracana where 7 years earlier he had lost the final against Germany-, Messi

In 2016 he had resigned from the National Team after losing another Copa América against Chile.

He returned for the qualifiers and the World Cup in Russia, with the players fighting with Sampaoli - Sevilla has just thrown out Sampaoli for the same reason - and a certain premonition of elusive glory.

With his self-esteem at stake, he was saved from a penalty by the goalkeeper from Iceland, a young filmmaker who almost had to give up football because he cut his finger on a film set.

The repeated story of the Barça super champion who cooled off in the National Team, of the blaugrana fire that turned into wet phosphorus with the albiceleste, changed that night in Brasilia forever.

The seal of

arrived three months ago, in Qatar.

Nothing was the same, neither for him nor for the Argentine fans, who threw themselves into

, in a massive chemistry that until two years ago, at least, did not happen in that dimension.

Messi knows better than anyone that

.

It is unfair but irremediable: the history of sport is written with epic and it is always more difficult to find epic in defeat.

It came to Messi as a

while hundreds of thousands of non-Argentine fans around the world wanted him to finally be champion.

He did it

12 years older than Kempes in 1978 (second World Cup) and 10 years older than Maradona in 1986, also in his second World Cup.

Perhaps that is

of his conquest.

Messi arrived at the competitive and great

at the age when 80 percent of footballers retire.

The

that took him to Europe at the age of 14 at the cost of thigh pricks to activate the growth gene, ultimately led him to the World Cup.

That display of character became headline-coincidentally-when he went from the left-handed and unpredictable waist to the public stance of

That scenic change was also strong

Messi has been ignored by the Monumental to bathe in glory at the

and now he comes whistled from the

(PSG does not understand that a team is more than a collection of stars) to bathe in the unforgettable ovation that the Monumental will give away this Thursday.

He is now a relaxed man who understands and enjoys the fact that happiness, the place of enjoyment, the place of joy, has

for the first time in his life.

In the depth of the

-that Freudian invention that scrutinizes the morality of actions-, the peerless goal of his 800th goal seems to have been saved for this Argentine reunion.

Better to shout it in Buenos Aires than in Paris.

That's why he goes to dinner at a grill in Palermo and rejects the invitation to leave through the back door.

When he gets into the human tide, head on, there are

screams .

That is

.

In Argentina - through sheer persistence - he forever opened the front door.

look too

Di María and the world champions' party at the Monumental: "It will be an unforgettable moment for everyone"

look too

The surprising audio of Lionel Messi to a TV program and his wish for the party of the world champions