‘Ho visto Messi’: a superstar with infinite potential

BARCELONA - The story will grow over time, and the 93,330 fans who were at the stadium on that April evening will soon turn into hundreds of thousands.

Everyone will want to have been at the Camp Nou to watch Barcelona’s mythical 4-1 win over Arsenal, with four goals from Lionel Messi: the match that signalled the infinite potential of the young Argentine star.

In the heyday of Argentine football legend Diego Maradona at Napoli, in the late 1980s, a song with the title “Ho visto Maradona” (I have seen Maradona) shook San Paolo stadium.

“Mum, do you know why my heart is beating? I have seen Maradona, and I am in love?” the song said.

Barcelona fans are culturally far from the volcanic Napoletani, but they should probably make up something similar because their slow “Messi, Messi, Messi” sounds somewhat unworthy of the striker’s wonders.

“I have seen Messi,” enthusiastic Barca fans said Wednesday, on a cold, grey morning.

Late Tuesday, that enthusiasm was already overflowing in the comments of the star’s team-mates.

“Messi is incredible, a footballer of those you get once every 25-30 years. He scores goals, he helps out, he puts pressure on rivals, he defends… He is the number one,” said midfielder Xavi Hernandez, Barca’s “brains” on the pitch.

Xavi’s praise and admiration are shared by all his team-mates, who take it for granted that Messi is and should be, at 22, the highest paid player in the squad.

You have to take care of the genius and pamper him. Barcelona coach Josep Guardiola knows that. He usually allows Messi small privileges, like extending his Christmas holiday a bit. Guardiola even convinced club president Joan Laporta of letting the striker play with Argentina at the 2008 Olympics, when the club was under no FIFA-imposed obligation to let him go.

The coach too has run out of ways to define Messi as a footballer.

“I will leave the adjective to you guys. I no longer know what to say. These things cannot be explained in words, there are no words. You have to watch this kind of performance,” Guardiola told reporters after Messi outplayed Arsenal.

But the coach is not lost for words when it comes to defining Messi at the personal level.

“The good thing about Messi is that tomorrow he will wake up and have the affection of his people and his team-mates. He is only interested in football, he is an example for children because of the way he handles everything,” Guardiola said.

Messi, indeed, seems only interested in football. He appears to despise the seductive add-ons that come with being a superstar in the world’s most popular sport.

When asked which of Tuesday night’s four goals he liked best, Messi’s answer was most disappointing: “The important thing is to score goals.”

When asked how far he could rise as a football star, Messi stayed true to himself: “The important thing is that the team wins.”

The player’s humility does not match his figures: on Tuesday he caught up with the Brazilian Rivaldo as Barcelona’s top scorer in the Champions League, with 25 goals.

He has also surpassed his own 38 goals of the 2008-09 season. On Tuesday, he ran to celebrate this with Bara’s substitute keeper Juan Manuel Pinto, who had bet with the Argentine in the summer that he would not be able to repeat those 38 goals.

By now, he has 39, and the obvious question is: can he reach 50? He potentially has at least 10 matches left to play - eight in La Liga, and two against Inter Milan in the Champions League semifinals - but many expect Guardiola to let him rest at some point. Messi, of course, will do his best to avoid that: he hates not playing.

His four goals put him level with Marco Van Basten, Simone Inzaghi, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Andrei Shevchenko and Dado Prso, the five men who had managed to score four goals in a Champions League

match before the Argentine. However, Messi is the only one to have scored four goals in a play-off-round match.

The young striker shines because he is happy playing. So says Johan Cruyff, whom Messi challenges week after week as Barca’s top legend.

“He has the ability to do difficult things without suffering, without anxiety, without pain,” the Dutchman told El Periodico de Catalunya.

And he has the ability to save energy.

“Nobody at Barca wears himself out less than Leo. If he spent the match running, chasing his moment, when it came he would have no spark, he would be exhausted by the time he had to shoot,” Cruyff explained.

“Many ask themselves, and ask me, why Leo is not like that when he plays for Argentina. Because his team-mates are not the same, or even his situation on the pitch, and he is forced to run, to sort out his life individually, and he wastes energy in a pointless way,” he added.

“And Pep (Guardiola), who has pulled him away from the wing, has put him in a place where he has become the reference for his team-mates,” Cruyff noted.

Cruyff, obviously, has also seen Messi.