It pains me to write this because it’s so obvious: Lionel Messi walks a lot. This is something we already knew, that’s been studied at length — Messi, soccer’s most prolific goalscorer, spends about 80% of the game moseying about the pitch. He covers anywhere from a mile to two miles less than other forwards in any given game and spends most of that time moving at a very leisurely pace.
On Tuesday, as Messi and Inter Miami met the Philadelphia Union in a Leagues Cup semifinal, I saw this unfold from a unique angle. I traded my usual post in the press box for a fieldside stool and my camera, training it on Messi alone for the duration of the entire match.
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The common narrative surrounding Messi is that he walks better than most players run, and peering at him up close for an entire match, that becomes obvious enough. Messi spends most of his time scanning the field, studying the positioning of other players and identifying weaknesses. He frequently advises teammates on their own positioning.
The amount of time Messi spends walking around the pitch also does something interesting to your brain, as a photographer: It lulls you into a false sense of comfort. There are only so many candids you can take of any single player walking around the pitch before your mind — and your eyes — start to wander. At that moment, Messi will vanish.
In that way, you start to understand what it’s like to defend him. So much of your work as a photographer involves studying the movements of players and their behavioral patterns. You endeavor to stay one step ahead of them, to afford even a millisecond to compose in real-time. But through the lens, Messi disappears in plain sight, so often leaving you with shots that are out of focus, poorly framed or sometimes lacking the player at all.
See what I mean?
It’s easy enough to approach Messi’s arrival in the United States with a healthy dose of cynicism. For years, the Argentine has been the driving force behind entire league economies and that is very much the case in Major League Soccer, as well, where he has thus far felt very much like a product. It’s also understandable; the league latched onto this particular player as the thing that might make it globally relevant, documenting and advertising his every movement to millions across the world.
There are tiny moments, though, that feel less choreographed and much more endearing. Messi’s presence around children so often feels that way.
For a solid minute, the player escort Messi took the pitch with on Tuesday could not stop smiling. Wide-eyed and freckled, the kid seemed like something out of central casting, a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. Messi himself offered a few chuckles as the youngster waved to his parents; the kid spent most of the anthem staring at them in disbelief, his face full of wonder.
It’s wonderful to watch Messi play, and nice to photograph him. But it’s even nicer to see something like this — a core memory being formed in front of you. Having spoken to kids – now full-grown adults – who were in a similar position with Pele and the New York Cosmos generations ago, I can say for certain: Years from now, this kid will still be talking about this.
Messi was booed from the second he entered the pitch. Even in Philly, a city notorious for rabid fandom, this felt a little shocking. This was my fourth time seeing Messi play in person and every single time, he has been the recipient of unwavering, unfiltered adoration. Even on the road in Dallas, the bulk of the sellout crowd felt pro-Messi. In Philly (or more accurately Chester Pa., a Philly exurb) even the fans sporting all manner of Messi kits jeered at him during warmups. When Messi hit the post on two different occasions while practicing free kicks, they laughed at him and offered Chester’s version of a Bronx cheer.
Watching Messi warm-up has its own beauty. It’s like watching Ken Griffey, Jr. or Ted Williams swing a baseball bat. In a vacuum, their swings are so pretty that you’d watch them do it even if they weren’t hitting anything. The same is true for Messi and a handful of other soccer players: it feels nice just to watch them hit a free kick, even when the stakes are non-existent.
The Union’s head coach, Jim Curtin, said after his team’s loss that he may have underestimated the level of awe his players would feel around Messi. At field level, it seemed obvious that would become a problem almost instantly.
In the days leading up to the match, so much of the banter surrounding it centered around the carefully-crafted identity of the Union itself — a well-drilled collection of players that have punched well above their spending level for years. And the Union, some pointed out, possess something that many of Messi’s early MLS opponents haven’t: a mastery in the dark arts. Real MLS sickos began to salivate at the idea of Messi coming face-to-face with Union midfielder Jose “el Brujo” Martinez, among the league’s elite instigators, a man who has made a career out of getting under people’s skin.
Within minutes of the opening whistle, Messi and Martinez met off the ball. And just moments later, the two were laughing. Whatever intentions Martinez had before the game went out the window the second he approached Messi. The scene repeated itself over and over again with many of the Union’s players; when Messi came into their orbit, they’d turn and offer him a few words, or a nod. For the most part, they just seemed happy to be around them.
We’ve all had moments where we’re starstruck, where our normal personalities go out the window, where we start laughing at every joke someone makes, funny or not. Far be it from me to criticize someone for losing their cool. But it certainly didn’t help the Union in this game.
Messi has fit in quickly in Miami and has formed a seemingly special bond with a pair of players: Finnish midfielder Robert Taylor and former Atlanta United striker Josef Martinez, who ranks among the league’s all-time great attacking players.
While Messi’s bond with Taylor is present enough on the field — the two have regularly been involved in each other’s goals — the Argentine’s bond with Martinez seems more omnipresent, on and off the field. During training sessions, Messi warms up with Martinez and the two frequently end up in each other’s arms while celebrating each other’s goals. It’s a little reminiscent, frankly, of Messi’s relationship with Luis Suarez at Barcelona, one which often felt playful, genuine and full of joy, like an actual friendship playing out on the pitch.
Prior to the arrival of Messi, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba, Martinez was Miami’s featured acquisition. Things did not end well for him in Atlanta, and expectations were high when he arrived at Inter Miami this preseason. A slow start had many wondering if he’d ever recapture the magic that made him an MLS legend.
Now, Martinez looks reborn. It would be short-sighted to assume that this is entirely to do with Messi; Martinez has long been among the league’s most prolific strikers. Undeniably, though, he’s been helped by the Argentine’s presence, and by the faith that Messi has put in him — Martinez has continued to take penalty kicks for Miami, given clearance to do so by Messi himself, who many assumed would take them all.
Even when he’s drifting in and out of games, it sometimes feels like a foregone conclusion that Messi will score. It felt this way last week against Charlotte, when we got a more subdued version of the player, and it felt that way on Tuesday as well, when Messi did not directly impose his will on the match in the ways he had against Dallas, or Atlanta, or Cruz Azul.
It came as no surprise, then, when Messi found the back of the net in the first half with a well-placed 36-yard strike, even if it likely should’ve been saved. It felt far more shocking when a second-half effort was cleared off the line by Union defender Jack Elliot. Messi, and everybody else in the stadium, expected the ball to go in and the Argentine does something funny afterward: he raises his hand and smiles at Elliot, who can hardly believe his eyes.
Messi’s God-like status to fans and corporate interests alike is maybe most apparent in the dying moments of the match.
First, he’s the target of a pair of pitch invaders, who are handled with relative ease by stadium security and by Messi’s own personal bodyguard. Holding his cell phone aloft, the first of those pitch invaders looks at the Argentine with pleading eyes, and Messi briefly takes a couple of steps towards him, as if he’ll maybe offer a greeting, as he’s sometimes done with other interlopers. That potential is wiped away quickly as security hauls him off the field.
Just minutes later, the match ends and Messi is swarmed — absolutely, positively swarmed. By photographers, by videographers working for Apple, the league’s broadcast partner, by teammates, and by opponents who want just a little face time with him. Everybody gets a few seconds with Messi, and you do your best to train your lens on these little interactions, snapping candids in the fray.
Later in the evening, an editor, while looking through my photographs, jokes that I should set up a table at the edge of the pitch and sell these photos to players, in the way amusement parks will offer you a photo of yourself shrieking while riding a roller coaster.
I certainly feel lucky to have the level of access I do to Messi but there’s also some small part of me that feels a little strange about what I’ve done for the past several hours. The idol worship aspect of all of it, the idea that you’d train a lens on anybody for hours at a time, the idea that you’d breathlessly document any human being’s every move, feels almost perverse in a way. The feeling is particularly strong as I jam my lens between four other photographers and take my last photo of the night, of Messi doing something literally pedestrian — walking.
(Top photo: Pablo Maurer)
