Messi's tourist circuit in Rosario

Having already been called Rosario's ambassador to the world, it is very clear that Messi is a popular figure in Rosario. So much so, that in November of 2019 a tourist circuit opened up detailing his childhood places when he was in Rosario.

It's made out of ten places where Messi used to spend his time, which go hand in hand with with stories, anecdotes, images and audiovisuals, where the Rosario Turismo app presents a journey through Messi's childhood neighborhood, his school, the 'potreros', his first clubs (Grandoli and Newell's) and even the place where he met Antonella Roccuzzo, his wife.

The places are the following:

Santa Fe Sports Museum: This museum is located where Battalion 121 used to operate. When he was a boy, Messi and his friends would outwit the soldiers guarding the place and sneak into the huge field that turned into a 'potrero' to emulate an eleven-a-side soccer field. Today, a large metal cube 40 meters high stands out in the Parque Héroes de Malvinas. It houses a museum that pays homage to athletes who made the national sport great and were born in the province of Santa Fe. On the second floor, at the end of the tour of the football area, there is an exclusive space about Messi.

Club Abanderado Grandoli: The little field where at the age of 4, when he was with his grandmother in the stands as a spectator, his brother's team lost a player and Leo replaced him, scoring the winning goal. I've done an entry on Messi's time at Grandoli.

School N° 66 "Gral. Las Heras": His elementary school, which today has a mural by the Brazilian artist Paulo Consentino showing him wearing the albiceleste jersey. I've already done an entry on this topic.

La Bajada neighborhood: The streets where La Pulga played soccer with his brothers and friends. The figure of the crack can also be seen in one of the 34 murals that decorate the neighborhood.

El Campito Club: The 'potrero' where Leo Messi began his relationship with the ball is now a neighborhood club. In this little field he made his first friends and spent long afternoons kicking the ball and riding his bike. In December 2018 these friends decided to transform the place into a space for recreational, artistic and sports meetings. Girls and boys from La Bajada neighborhood can now enjoy a place where they can practice different sports, get together with friends and dream like Leo did.

Central Córdoba: In 1995 Messi wore the blue and red shirt of the Charrúa in a children's tournament in which he was crowned champion.

Paseo de los Olímpicos: The star plaque of the promenade is located at the intersection of Av. Pellegrini and Entre Ríos, where Lionel Andrés Messi, who in 2008 won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing, China, is depicted.

Complejo Malvinas Newell's: This is the Newell's Old Boys children's soccer school where Messi began to approach his future as a professional.  You can check this entry for more information.

Coloso del Parque: Newell's stadium, where Messi used to go with his father and siblings as fans.

City Center Rosario: At the age of 9, Lucas Scaglia, a friend of Lionel's, invited his cousin Antonella to enjoy the Paraná River with them. It was there where their lives began to intertwine. They became good friends and even though Leo went to live in Barcelona, they never lost contact.

The page for the circuit can be found here. That is all for today, so as always, I hope you liked this entry and I'll see you in the next blog.

When an 8 year old Messi stole the show

It was summer of 1996 in Argentina. In a rainy day, Gerardo 'Tata' Martino, one of Newell's Old Boys' biggest legends, was bidding his farewell from the club in their stadium. After the first half, and it was time for the 'Machine of 87'' to show up.

They had won a title last year, with Messi scoring 36 goals in 30 games, so they ran an Olympic lap across the stadium. After doing so, the team made a circle around the center of the pitch and put Messi in the middle, encouraging him to do something. And so, he did: He made some keepie-uppies and the crowd loved it, chanting 'Maradó! Maradó!' and some people doing a standing ovation, as Franco Casanova remembered it.

Messi and Gerardo Martino would later be reunited at Barça in the 2013/14 season when Tata was the manager, then they would meet up again in the national team which he managed from 2014-2016.

That is all for today, so I hope you liked this entry and I'll see you in the next blog.

Bruno Biancucchi, Messi's cousin and his first 'successor'

Bruno Biancucchi was born on November 23rd, 1996. He was the 3rd of three sons from Marcela Cuccittini and Claudio Biancucchi and is Lionel Messi's cousin since Marcela is Celia Cuccittini's sister. At that time, Messi was playing at Newell's and scored 36 goals in 27 games that year (as well as first meeting Antonella).

He rose to popularity in March of 2006 after El Mundo made an article of him, calling him Messi's successor (when Messi was only 18). Bruno was playing at Renato Cesarini at the time. Pedro Pécora, a mechanic from his neighborhood, said that Bruno had an even bigger potential than Messi's. His parents were also very optimistic about his future career. Infobae also took notice of this, as well as other news sources at the time.

Currently, he's playing at Newell's Old Boys, the club he's a fan of. He also sympathizes with Boca Juniors. He has a Twitter account, an Instagram account, and a Facebook account.

Although he didn't fulfill the potential some gave him, he's still passionate about football and he's only 24 years old, so there's still a future to his career. That is all for today, so I hope you liked this entry and I'll see you in the next blog.

Messi's tryout with River Plate

Considering his stay at Newell's over, Messi looked to sign for a new club. One of the big teams that was interested in him was River Plate, and in August of 2000, he made some tryouts with the team.

He was originally scouted by ex-River Plate defender Federico Vairo, who told some people in the club and that's where the interest came from. For three days, he played for River's "pre-novena", and from the beginning, he showed his magic to everyone.

On his first day in the tryouts, a Tuesday, he entered on a Universidad de Buenos Aires field, few meters away from the Monumental. At 3 PM, the first practice started, and at 3:45 PM, he was called in by Eduardo Abrahamian, the coach. It's said that in the first few minutes he entered, he dazzled everyone. He scored an astounding 16 goals in this training. At 5 PM, the coach called Messi's father and cited Messi for the next practice.

On Wednesday, he was cited for the practice at 2 PM, and the practice started at 3 PM. He once again dazzled everyone and was called for a practice on Friday at 5 PM.

Finally, on Friday, he entered the Monumental with his father and his friend Gimnénez. He was paired up with Gonzalo Higuaín for this training, who he later shared teams with once again years later on the national team. At 5 PM, the practice ended, and he returned to Rosario at 6 PM. His friend, Giménez, ended up signing for River Plate.

Despite some attempts by Vairo and Abrahamian to tell the higher-ups to sign Messi, neither Delem (a River Plate icon) nor the other higher-ups took much importance. Although the reasons for not signing him are still being debated, what's true is that he wasn't signed by River Plate, and he ended up signing for Barcelona a few months later.

Messi, the ambassador of Rosario

In 2011, after an amazing year with a lot of trophies and goals, Messi went to his native city, Rosario, on vacations. On the 30th of December, he was called to be the ambassador of Rosario to the world, which was an important recognition and showed his importance to the citizens of Rosario. The distinction was handed by the mayoress of the district, Mónica Fein.

He talked a lot during the press conference, saying at one moment "It is a great pride for me to receive this award, in my city, in my country. I want to thank this recognition in Rosario, in my house, in the place where I was born, where my people and my family are and where will surely I live.", saying that Rosario is a beautiful city that grows every year, and he also spoke about other topics.

Since Cristina Kirchner (Argentina's president at the time) would undergo an operation for her thyroid cancer in a few days, he supported her in this difficult time alongside his foundation. And since Gerardo Martino was recently signed as Newell's manager, he spoke well of him, saying that he was loved by the clubs and the fans, and hoped the best for him.

Overall, it's now clear that Messi is the most famous person from Rosario ever, so it makes sense that he would be the ambassador to the world of the city. I hope you liked this entry, and as always, I'll see you in the next blog.

Messi (2014), a documentary film

With Messi's massive popularity over the world, it comes as no surprise that a movie has been made about him, specifically a documentary film that details his life from his youth at Newell's all the way to 2014.

It was directed by Álex de la Iglesia and written by Jorge Valdano, ex-Argentinian footballer. The production company was Mediapro and it was distributed by Warner Bros. The runtime of the film was 1 hour and 33 minutes. The film got originally released on August 27th, 2014, at the Venice Film Festival.

In terms of reviews, it currently has 7.3/10 stars on IMDb. The movie even managed to get nominated for the Venice Days Award. To understand how big that is, we have to remember that the Venice Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the world, and is part of the "Big Three" alongside the Cannes Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival. And in the box office, according to Box Office Mojo, it received $33,607

The cast included people like Johan Cruyff, Maradona, Iniesta, Mascherano, Menotti, Sabella, Piqué, Jorge Valdano and Pere Gratacó (Messi's coach in Barcelona B). The music was done by Joan Valent, known for his previous work in "La Caja" and specially "Las brujas de Zugarramurdi", the cinematography was done by the prestigious Kiko de la Rica, nominated for numerous awards beforehand, and the production design was done by important people as Antxón Gómez and Marcelo Vergés.

In the end, although it didn't reach levels of popularity that match some of the best in football cinema, it did deliver on showing Messi's life story, getting opinions from his team-mates and ex-coaches as well, which gives us a good insight on who he was and who he is (though it's from 2014).

Every goal is for Celia

Out of the 730 goals he has scored in his entire career, even the ones he's scored in friendlies and his La Masía days, all of them have been dedicated to Messi's maternal grandmother, Celia Olivera de Cuccittini.

She was born on May 26th 1930, daughter to Pedro Olivera and Emilia. Later, at 31, she had a daughter called María Celia Cuccittini, who then, alongside Jorge Messi, had a son (as well as 3 other siblings) called Lionel Andrés Messi Cuccittini. She was Messi's main inspiration for becoming a footballer all the way back in 1992 when he first joined Grandoli (he entered the club thanks to Celia's efforts).

Unfortunately, she died in 1998 when Messi was still at Newell's Old Boys, and this obviously meant a lot to Leo. After all, the biggest supporter of his dreams had just gone away, so it wasn't going to be easy to continue.

But nevertheless, he continued, finishing his time at Newell's Old Boys, going to Barcelona in mid-2000, and continued his career there until today.

Now, every time he scores a goal, he points both of his index fingers to the sky to dedicate it to Celia, the person who introduced him to the sport who he's now the greatest at, and the first person to believe in his abilities.

How it all started

One certain day, back in 1992, inside Club Abanderado Grandoli's stadium, Messi could be seen hitting the ball to the wall and receiving it himself in the stands, a common practice when having the ball alone. Leo had been attached to the ball back when he was only 3 years old in fact. The club was not far away from Messi's home, as there was only a 1.5 Km difference between them.

On that certain day, Grandoli had one less man, so their coach, Ricardo Aparicio, decided to approach Celia, Messi's mother, to ask her if he could play him. She was reluctant, citing the difference of age, height and his lack of experience, but his grandmother pushed the decision of making him play, and that's what happened.

According to what Aparicio said, the first ball he received went to the side of him and he watched it go, but the second time he received the ball, he received it with his left foot and dribbled past everyone, making a statement of how good he was early on. And as a fun fact, after Aparicio, his father Jorge Messi was Grandoli's coach.

People were saying that the new Maradona had been born, and Messi certainly met his expectation as his team usually won by a big difference and with a lot of goals coming from him as well, although Ramon Min, a Dutch sportswriter admin of @MessiStats_ has only been able to collect 5 goals from his time at Grandoli.

He also won a few trophies in Grandoli, one of them being this one:

One day, his father couldn't pay the entry, and therefore couldn't enter the stadium, so that would be the last time Messi wore Grandoli's shirt. After that, he moved to Newell's Old Boys, having a wonderful run, and after moving to Barcelona in September of 2000, the rest, as they say, is history.

Messi before signing for Barcelona

In Barcelona, Messi achieved everything for what he is known for today (aside from his national team of course). But we also know that Messi once played for Newell's Old Boys, a team from his own province which he was a fan of. Today's blog will be dedicated to his time at Newell's Old Boys, looking at stats and other things as well.

Between 1992 and 1993, Messi played for a team called Abanderado Grandoli FC. Even when he was only 5 to 6 years old, his talent was easily recognizable. People said that Grandoli had "The Next Maradona", and even people not connected to the club watched Grandoli's games to see Messi play.

After leaving Grandoli for Newell's Old Boys in 1994, his debut was against Pablo VI on April 9th, 1994. Newell's won that game 6-0 with 4 goals coming from Messi, showing more of his incredible potential. That year, he would score 40 goals in only 29 games.

In 1995, he decreased to 36 goals in 30 games, but a fantastic thing happened as, although he got locked in a bathroom due to a damaged lock, he ended up breaking the glass and got to the pitch when his team was losing 1-0. He later scored a hat-trick and gave his team the victory and a bicycle as well, which was the prize for the winner. As a side note, he played and won in a tournament this year with Central Córdoba. In the same year, he scored an amazing volley goal which included a sombrero on an opponent beforehand,

In 1996, he bagged 36 goals in 27 games. He also met Antonela in this year, which would later evolve into a romantic relationship.

In 1997, he scored 40 goals in 36 games. He also made his international debut in Peru, on a tournament called "Copa de la Amistad", which he won and made a great performance in the final.

In the year 1998, he got a low 27 goals in 25 games. There is not much to detail in this year unfortunately.

Finally, in 1999 he got an all-time high of 55 goals in only 29 games, nearly two goals per game. One of his recorded goals that year was one where he dribbled past a player with the touch of his heel and later shoots to the far post for a great goal. There was also his performance against El Torito, a game where he won 4-3 with a goal from himself. This would be his last year at Newell's Old Boys before he moved to Barcelona.

This great video compiles Messi's highlights before signing for Barcelona. As we can see, he was destined to be the greatest from the very start.