From the drama and the international noise, they moved on to the limited joy of the unlimited spectacle of football.
Lionel Messi returned to the country to play with the National Team that won in Qatar
only eighteen days after the shooting attack against the business that his father-in-law, José Roccuzzo
, continues to attend to in Rosario.
Fourteen 9-mm caliber bullets hit the front of that business in the early hours of March 2.
The anxiety of his city became news in a good part of the planet when it was learned that the still anonymous unpunished released a message of total impact in the place.
"Messi, we are waiting for you.
Javkin is a narco, he is not going to take care of you
, ”said a neatly scribbled piece of paper.
Javkin is Pablo Javkin, the mayor of Rosario, who was immediately the political spokesman for that episode, a milestone for his city plagued by drug violence.
The Casa Rosada, the Congress, the provincial officials, the ruling party and the opposition, all acted with a speed of response that until now had been lethargic.
Messi is in Argentina, and he did not make any public allusion to that fact
.
Neither did his family.
The judicial investigators investigating the case, still unpunished but not devoid of advances that could elucidate it, are aware of what it means for the star to move these days in national territory.
The custody of Messi and the entire National Team entered an unknown phase
.
To prevent dangerous crowds from chasing the "champions",
secret operatives were organized
to move them from the property where they slept and trained, in Ezeiza, to the Monumental stadium where they played the first and great friendly after winning the Cup in Qatar.
Security changed completely for the AFA and for the team.
Messi, meanwhile, in addition to keeping quiet about what happened in his hometown,
visited friends without bodyguards
from the federal forces.
“He wants to remain as close to a common person as he can.
He will never make it, but that's how he asked to move ”, a source revealed to
Clarín
that they treated him since he returned to Argentina.
Security officials had no intelligence alert regarding possible concrete threats against him.
Messi's own father-in-law, the father of his wife Antonella Roccuzzo, was the first to convey to him, that March 2, that he was convinced that those bullets that ruined the front of his supermarket were nothing more than a message intended for other people who
used its fame to generate absolute massiveness.
It is, for example, what the prosecutor in the case transmitted to him when he took a testimonial statement from him.
And it continues to be the main hypothesis of the political officials of Rosario and Santa Fe: those who shot at the Roccuzzo-Messi business
could be members of the corrupt sector of the Police of that province.
The great dilemma for Security officials
revolved around how the National Team players could move to the Monumental
without causing large mobilizations of fans like those that surrounded the bus that tried to take the team to the obelisk after their first return to the country as champions. of the world.
Six million people in the street, and the inmates of the ruling party's politics, frustrated that celebration and put everything at risk.
For the first time since the AFA premises were established in the town of Ezeiza, the Federal Police, in charge of the Ministry of National Security, no longer controls
or guards this large sports establishment, of very large dimensions
.
The fights between the head of the AFA, Daniel "Chiqui" Tapia, with the head of Security of the Casa Rosada, Aníbal Fernández, caused this substantial modification to monitor the world champions.
The one who gained Tapia's total trust was the Secretary of Security but of Buenos Aires,
Sergio Berni, who was left in charge of the operation to guard the world champions, and the threatened Messi
.
The special forces of the Buenos Aires, the Tactical Operations Unit (UTOI) guard Tapia since the events of last December.
And now he was in charge of the movements of the entire AFA and of the players who moved from Ezeiza to the Monumental.
The property of the National Team, contrary to what happened in the last stadium of the National Team,
this time was not the object of desire of the national policy K who tried before to get a photo with the champions
.
Tapia, on the other hand, received a visit from the union leader Luis Barrionuevo, who thus returned the kindness that "El Chiqui" had with him during the summer, when he twice brought the World Cup to the gastronomic hotel in Mar del Plata , the Sasso.
Barrionuevo visited the head of the AFA and the players in secret and without showing off.
Berni, meanwhile, organized the confidential security operation together with the Buenos Aires headquarters to ensure that Messi and his teammates, including the coaching staff of the team led by Lionel Scaloni, were able to reach the River stadium without incident.
The person who coordinated with Berni and headed the security plan for the National Team under the jurisdiction of the Federal Capital was the Buenos Aires chief of staff, Felipe Miguel.
Berni and Miguel met face to face, without the press, in the offices that the Buenos Aires security minister has on the so-called "Puente 12" on the Ricchieri highway.
Several possibilities were then deployed
to move the players without crowds that could create danger, always without revealing anything.
The organized plan prevailed so that everyone left the Ezeiza property
in several vans
.
Berni accompanied Messi in one of those vehicles.
The strategy of the combis has an explanation that is now known.
Berni was in charge of the transfer from the Ezeiza property itself until it reached Buenos Aires territory.
The players could take several changes until the Monumental.
In a few minutes the real transfer was deployed, which was kept
under total secrecy and which ended in success
.
From the City Police headquarters, Miguel coordinated that the vans continue on their way from the Ricchieri highway along the 25 de Mayo highway until they entered an area where they would lose visual contact with those who might have followed them, even by air.
The small vans that took the champions to the Monumental entered the highways that were closed to traffic,
without warning in advance, seven minutes before those vehicles passed
.
They took the 25 de Mayo until they reached the tunnel known as Paseo del Bajo.
Once that section was completed, the Buenos Aires police cut off again by surprise and for a few minutes the traffic to the Federal Capital from Lugones Avenue.
It happens that the combis came to light at the end of the Paseo del Bajo, took the Illia highway, and then entered the wrong way through Lugones to the Monumental to turn at one of its exits that leads directly to the River stadium.
If this transfer had been made in a bus like the one used by the players in the failed celebrations last December,
the big bus would not have been able to turn
at that exit taken in the wrong direction to quickly enter the field where the friendly match against Panama would be played. .
Among other options, it had been planned that everyone could travel by air in helicopters that would land at a riding club near River, and from there they would go in different cars.
It was discarded.
Miguel and Berni managed to ensure that the National Team reached its destination quickly and without problems.
Berni usually works better with the Buenos Aires opposition on security issues than with the national ruling party.
This is the Frente de Todos… At no time, as has been said, was there any thought of extending custody to the team due to the shooting that affected Messi's family in Rosario.
The safety of the National Team was such a central issue for all its protagonists, that Tapia gave Minister Berni an award once the match against Panama was over.
The UTOI will continue to monitor their movements, just as it will take care of the precious trophy awarded by FIFA to the World Champions.
The World Cup is closely followed by UTOI uniforms wherever Tapia takes it.
The secret security operation included exceptions for those players who had decided where to return to sleep at the AFA property from which they had left for the field where they were able to do the Olympic round for the first time in Argentina.
Each one had private cars to leave the Monument when the streets were already deserted.
Messi and his family, for example,
left the field in their own car, bound for Puerto Madero,
the most sought-after neighborhood in the country where they would have a property in one of the luxury towers that rise towards the sky and on the side of the river.
As Clarín was able to verify according to sources from Rosario's politics, and from the security forces, Messi's father-in-law, Antonella's father, José Roccuzzo, who suffered the attack with bullets in his business, did not go to the field.
He preferred to stay in his city where he moves like he always did.
Messi approves these movements without special supervision because both he and his father, Jorge,
are also convinced that the shooting did not have them as recipients.
The most famous soccer player on the planet had moved the same way before playing the game against Panama.
He left the AFA in a private car to eat with his family and Adrián Suar and other artists at the Don Julio grill in Palermo, and if it had been up to him to leave the restaurant, where a sudden crowd gathered, he would not have counted on the support of the Buenos Aires police and some private bodyguards.
Another of Messi's departures from Ezeiza was towards a country bar in the north of Buenos Aires where Marcelo Tinelli and his family were waiting for him, also for dinner.
"Lio" arrived accompanied by his mother, his father, and two of his brothers.
He took the World Cup.
Messi fell on the shooting in front of all the interlocutors of public relevance with whom he had spoken up to now, according to inquiries from this newspaper.
He even avoided discussing the subject with important personalities from Rosario who contacted him.
Of course, the shock of the shots in his city during these days produced unexpected or unforeseen changes in the usual dynamics of that city devastated by crime and deaths from drug trafficking and police and judicial corruption.
The mayor of the City managed to be heard.
Reinforcements of federal security forces arrived.
And, above all, the governor of Santa Fe, Omar Perotti, did not give in to various interests that lobbied with variable objectives linked to filling vacant positions in the prosecutor's offices of the Public Ministry of the Province.
He chose, for example,
María Cecilia Vranicich, to be voted by the Legislature as the new Attorney General.
She is from Rosario.
The more conservative Peronism had other candidates, also more questioned.
Those fourteen bullets fired at dawn, still unpunished, perhaps not for much longer, shook national politics.
The power of soccer is capable of achieving, many times, even if everything is the product of an unfair primary act, that some Justice arises where there was none before.
