For all of Lionel Messi’s gargantuan fame and enormous success with Barcelona and Argentina, he remains a distinctly private person.
Yeah, he’s got a few quid and some flash motors. But he’s focused on his football and his family.
He rarely, if ever, gets involved in controversy. He once made a six-hour round trip from Argentina training to have dinner with his mum. He’s still friends with the same kids he played youth football with at Newell’s Old Boys. Even his tattoos are of his family members.
When compared to his nation’s other great footballing superstar, Maradona, you might even say Messi’s a little… boring. But boring can be good. Boring can be nice. Boring means no vices. Boring means no violence.
Yet even the most sensible people let their hair down once in a while, don’t they? Even that friend who is usually the one carrying others home after a night out has a tale to tell of the time they projectile vomited on a nightclub bouncer’s white trainers, right?
Well, Messi is no different. Apart from the fact that his tale involves a smorgasbord of world-class footballers, a very big trophy, an open-topped bus and a giant inflatable Chupa Chup.
Before we ruminate on Messi’s enormous Chupa Chup, though, the build-up to the occasion that saw him let loose is more than worth looking back on. Messi’s mad moment came in 2009, in the wake of one of his formative and still foremost successes.
It was in 2008-09 that Messi flourished into the superstar that we have come to love and revere in equal measure.
There had been plenty enough demonstrations of his once-in-a-generation talent prior to that campaign. He already had two La Liga titles, a Champions League medal and a Ballon d’Or third-place finish to his name for crying out loud.
But he had not been the sole protagonist of those league and European conquests, nor had Messi begun his mind-bending, relentless quest to break every goal and assist record going.
In 2008-09, things changed.
After a trophyless 2007-08, manager Frank Rijkaard was relieved of his duties. Pep Guardiola arrived, ousted Barca’s decadent superstar Ronaldinho and handed Messi the No.10 shirt. Messi was made the club’s highest-paid player and put on a new diet in an attempt to stop the muscular injuries that had bothered him previously.
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READ: A forensic analysis of the night Real fans stood to applaud Ronaldinho
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Guardiola was cautious with him, at least…
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