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Photos: Where’s Messi? Ask visitors to his native Argentina city
Cristiano Ronaldo has an airport named after him on his Portuguese home island of Madeira; Pele has his museum in his Brazilian native city of Santos; even Rocky Balboa - a fictional boxer- has been paid homage with a statue in Philadelphia. But for visitors making a pilgrimage to their idol Lionel Messi’s native Argentine city of Rosario, there are no Messi statues, no plaques or museums. Rosarinos instead seem to have an ambivalent relationship with the world’s most famous footballer.
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Customers are reflected in a picture of Lionel Messi at the VIP restaurant owned by Messi’s family in his hometown of Rosario, Argentina. No statues or museums stand here in honour of the footballer, but everyone seems to agree: the Messi’s are a humble, decent family; Lionel was a good kid, and he only cared about one thing only: football. (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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“Messi is playing, he’s from Rosario. Tell me: why is there not a line outside to watch this game?” Oshin Gharibi asked watching a match at a nearly empty bar with his girlfriend Lena Wagner who wore a royal blue away Barcelona shirt with Messi’s number 10 on the back. “Messi is such a big star from such a small place. How can you not give him the recognition that he deserves?” (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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A small mural depicting Lionel Messi as a child decorates the wall at a football field used by the Newell’s Old Boys youth team, Messi’s childhood club, in Rosario. Messi played for Rosario’s local team before signing with Barcelona at age 13. The mural is the only sign that he was a standout player here as a child. (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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German tourists Oshin Gharibi and Lena Wagner leave a handwritten letter at the home where Messi grew up in La Bajada, Rosario, accidentally making the house alarm go off. The couple are students who saved for months to come all the way for a pilgrimage to their idol's native city but found no Messi statues, plaques or museums. (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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Lionel Messi's former neighbour Marta Rodriguez shows her autographed picture with the star in La Bajada. Messi is still strongly connected to Rosario. His accent and expressions are unchanged, even though he left the city as a teen 18 years ago. He returns often and last year, he married his childhood sweetheart in the city. (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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Messi’s relationship with Rosario is ambivalent. Many here seem to come back to the same theories: a football-mad city divided by the rivalry of its two beloved clubs; the comparisons to Diego Maradona; and the idea that only victory matters. In a decade of winning trophies for his Barcelona club, Messi has yet to deliver a World Cup for Argentina --as Maradona did in 1986. (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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“You breathe football everywhere in Rosario, but, curiously, the air doesn’t smell of Messi,” author Guillem Balague writes in “Messi,” the official biography. Everybody seems to have a story about him, but “the city does not seem to want to gloat. It’s almost as if it is considered vulgar to have his face posted everywhere. Or perhaps they have just decided to respect his low profile,” Balague says. (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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Scultptor Sandro Alzugaray holds a scale model of a Lionel Messi statue at his atelier in Rosario. Alzugaray’s proposal to create a monument honouring Messi has stalled since the previous World Cup but he is confident that some day it will be approved by the city and that he'll find the financial support to make it happen. (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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“For us, the teachers who took care of him, it hurts to hear the criticism, the comparisons to Maradona,” said Messi’s primary school teacher Andrea Liliana Sosa, at the Escuela General Las Heras. “They don’t give him the importance he deserves. It’s as if the city can’t grasp that Lionel is from here.” (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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As a wedding gift, some of his childhood friends in La Bajada painted a large mural on a wall at a small field where they used to play as kids. It shows a bearded Messi surrounded by colourful planets, and on a corner it reads: “From another galaxy — and from my neighbourhood as well.” (Natacha Pisarenko / AP)
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