The man on the pavement talking on the phone

I saw Messi’s father only once, in Rosario, at the bar below my home. He stood on the pavement, talking on the phone and repeatedly refusing someone’s request. The bar owner explained that Jorge would say no to anything that was not related to sport.

The request involved Lionel Messi taking part in a “charitable” activity, but the charitable nature of the proposal seemed doubtful. This would have been around 2005, when relatively little was known about Messi. What people did know was that he had not received payment for his treatment in Argentina, and that his father had taken him to Catalonia.

The story of those private years has returned to the foreground: father and son sharing two rooms, crying secretly, missing their family and uncertain whether they would stay or return home. Jorge had left behind his other children and his wife to pursue a future imagined by a grandmother. In a letter to his father, Leo wrote: “I will miss you very much, but you will always be present, especially in the education of my children, because I teach and raise them as you raised me.”

“

He will tell him no. He will say no to anything that is not related to sport.

The writer turns the story into a question for both children and parents: do we do the right thing for our children, and for our parents? He focuses on the anonymous days between achievement and disappointment, between signing a contract or securing money for growth hormones and returning home empty-handed. Those moments, he suggests, resemble a ball traveling toward goal before anyone knows whether it will reach the net.

The writer says he is composing the piece in a hospital. His father has spent 60 days waiting in a bed for PAMI authorization to arrive by mail, while his daughter has undergone facial surgery after a fall in a park. In these unseen moments, he writes, simply remaining present and available for another person can be more important than the result.

“

I will miss you very much, but you will always be present, especially in the education of my children, because I teach and raise them as you raised me.