I Got To Watch Messi

For nigh on a decade, probably longer, I’ve admired Lionel Messi as the world’s greatest football (whereby football, I mean soccer) player. This is occasionally argued against by people who find something appealing in the egomaniacal Portuguese player, Cristiano Ronaldo, but they know. They get it. It’s one of the two, and being that only one of them has a World Cup on their footballing CV, well…

After Messi moved to the MLS last season, with the announcement coming in late May of 2023, in July of last year, he instantly topped the sports headlines of the summer. Every appearance, he found the highlight reels, reasons to be on ESPN SportsCenter. He seemed to be justifying the absurb money MLS and Inter Miami CF gave him to come to the US. In the hype, because I’m a fanboy who wanted to watch him play, and because I really enjoy the game, and because doing so would allow us the opportunity to see him play and get first dibs at World Cup games in 2026, we bought some New England Revolution season memberships.

This past Saturday night, he made his first appearance at Gillette Stadium. There were rumblings all week that he wouldn’t play, because Gillette uses a (ridiculous) artificial turf field, and everyone knows folks of age and with injury histories hate playing on the surface.

But, he played. Oh, did he play!

When Miami finally sent their starters out to warm up pre-game, the stadium, at this juncture, only two-thirds full, applauded to see him. We were relieved. He’s playing!

Then, when the teams march out from a tunnel, each line of eleven men from the same tunnel, led by their captains, the stadium erupted as he stepped onto the pitch, holding the hand of a little kid who must have been busting with pride and joy. They exchanged a few brief words before they started onto the turf, and I wished for almost anything to be that kid.

He tried not to smile as the place applauded madly for him. In the corner where I was, 30-plus rows above where they come out of the tunnel, a small group began chanting his name, “Messi! Messi!”

It was real. He was going to play! To start!

I got teary-eyed. My wife laughed. And I guess it’s sensible to laugh and find my emotion about such a thing funny, but that’s how I am. I am emotional. I feel. And I feel deeply about some things that might not make folks’ top hundred things to feel deeply about.

The game kicked off and New England scored in the very first minute. A goal from the Revolution’s own Argentine player, Tomas Chancalay. Shortly after, the game became dominated by Miami. Probing, holding the ball, easily completing passes, but not quite finding the measure of the Revs back line.

After twenty-five minutes or so, a palpable tension seemed to overtake the stadium, and certainly where I was in the place. A girl sitting next to me, wearing a Revs knitted cap and wrapped in a Revs scarf pumped her fists in frustration when in several successive attempts, the Inter Miami attack fizzled just as it appeared to be looking promising.

And then, he scored. Robert Taylor, moved centrally from the left wing, recovered a ball and played a beautifully-weighted ball to the Greatest Player’s feet. He had a touch, then he had five or six, all in the span of just a few yards, where anyone else touching the ball that much in so little time would have bumbled it forward and over the touchline for a goal kick, he merely measured the touches and the space, and passed the ball with ease but not finesse past the keeper and into the net.

The place erupted. We were all standing before he’d scored, because it appeared inevitable. When it happened, cheering throughout the stadium. Everyone was here for this. Sure, there was one guy in my section who booed, trying to hold up the charade that he was here for the Revolution.

After that, though, the tension became different feeling. It couldn’t have only been me who felt weird about wanting the visiting team to score again. But, we could see it was going to happen. It would take some time, but it was going to come. And the celebration for Messi’s second goal was muted relative to the first, because were we really rooting against our team? We’d leave pointing to the fact that teams don’t matter when you’re watching a legend of the sport take the field, play every minute, and dominate in the way you would want him to do.

He would finish the night with two goals and one assist. The assist would be a ball played squarely in the box to Luis Suarez, who did not start, but entered the game after an hour, and was nearly as well-received as Messi had been. His touches were more boisterous, insofar as Suarez takes the field with one thing in mind: scoring. When he finally found the back of the net with a cheeky chip over the keeper from fifteen yards, more applause. The game was nearly over anyway, it might as well be that the second-most famous and popular player on the pitch do what he came to MLS to do.

Messi didn’t trade shirts with anyone, but he did wave multiple times in the game’s waning minutes, to his adoring public. They were there for him.

And, we can say with joy and relief, he was there for us.