It was three years ago, in Miami, during a conversation with Zinedine Zidane. No one asked him about trophies or Ballon d’Or awards. Messi spoke about his father.
He said that Jorge got up every day at four in the morning and did not return until four or five in the afternoon, straight from the Acindar steel factory in Rosario, where he eventually held a managerial position. He would arrive, quickly drink some mate, and rush out to take him to training. When he could not, it was Celia, Lionel’s mother, who accompanied him.
Messi compared it with his life today: the good fortune of being able to take his own children to training, pick them up from school, and have the time his father never had. That conversation had circulated without much attention until this Friday, when Jorge Messi died and every word from his son began to be read differently.