On 27 August 2003, Spain ran out 3-2 winners over Argentina in the FIFA Under-17 World Championship Finland 2003™ semi-finals. The following day, at the hotel where both squads were staying, Argentina coach Hugo Tocalli bumped into the chef for La Roja’s travelling party, who said, “If you’d had that lad who plays for Barcelona, your team would’ve been champions.” Tocalli locked eyes with him and felt as if a dagger had been plunged into his chest. He asked if the chef was referring to 16-year-old Lionel Messi at Barcelona’s famed La Masia. “What?” replied the Spaniard in a bewildered tone. “You know about him and didn’t bring him?!” The Spanish Football Association had been desperately trying to convince Messi to don Spanish red.
Tocalli knew about the Argentinian, but had not selected him because he had only watched the VHS tape with his highlight reel ten days before travelling to Finland for the tournament. He was also reluctant to leave out any of the players who had been part of the successful qualification campaign.
The tape had been given to him by Claudio Vivas, the assistant to Marcelo Bielsa, the coach of the senior Argentina side at the time. Vivas received it in May 2003 when he was with Bielsa on a business trip at the Hotel Princesa Sofia in Barcelona. It was handed to him in person by Horacio Gaggioli, one of Messi’s first agents, who confidently said to Vivas, “You’re going to love it.”
It was Jorge Messi’s idea to hand out a videotape of his son with clips from Barça TV because he was still virtually unknown in Argentina. “Play it at normal speed because you can’t watch it like this,” Bielsa instructed Vivas in the hotel room. “This is normal speed, Marcelo.” Bielsa was flabbergasted. “He’s phenomenal,” was his appraisal. The tape took three months to reach Tocalli, who asked the Argentinian Football Association (AFA) to arrange a friendly swiftly after the tournament for Messi to make his debut and commit his international future to his homeland.
This Sunday, in the at New York New Jersey Stadium. Having played for Barcelona and lived in Spain from 2000 until 2021, Messi was offered the chance to play for Spain numerous times, but he never wavered: his international career would be with his country of birth. “I was petrified every day that Spain would claim Messi before us,” Tocalli told FIFA.
Messi finally made his Argentina debut in that hastily arranged Under-20 friendly against Paraguay on 29 June 2004 at Argentinos Juniors’ stadium, where a certain Diego Maradona had made his professional bow.
With Argentina 6-0 to the good and ten minutes left on the clock in front of just 500 spectators on a cold, drizzly evening, the substitute received the ball just inside the opposition half, close to the centre circle. Six seconds, six touches with his left foot and one with his right later, he had effortlessly rounded the goalkeeper to register his maiden goal for La Albiceleste.
La Pulga went on to lift the FIFA World Youth Championship Netherlands 2005™ trophy. Before then, however, officials at La Masia had contacted the Spanish national team to point out that Argentina had not yet called him up, suggesting he could yet be swayed to select the nation that had shaped his footballing development. Alex Garcia, a youth coach at Barcelona at the time, was the most persistent in urging Spain youth coordinator Gines Melendez to act.
Vivas, Bielsa’s assistant who had received the VHS tape in 2003, had previously watched Messi's older brother, Rodrigo, for Newell’s youth teams in the flesh. “Bring me entire matches. I want to watch him several times. A ten‑minute highlight reel isn’t enough,” Vivas told Gaggioli.
The VHS tape showcased a long-haired Messi gliding past opponents with mesmerising dribbling skills in a direct and decisive style. There were no more than a half-dozen clips. “He was like a squirrel,” Tocalli recalled. When Vivas passed the tape on to Tocalli, he made one heartfelt plea. “Don’t let this player slip away. I’m asking you as an Argentinian and as a football lover.”
After returning from the U-17 World Championship in Finland, Tocalli asked Omar Souto, a long-serving administrator in the AFA national-team department, to contact the Messi family to call Lionel up to the youth side. In Monte Grande on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Souto got his hands on a telephone directory and began calling every Messi listed in Rosario from a public telephone booth, asking for “Leonardo”.
He first reached Lionel’s grandmother, Celia, then an uncle and finally Jorge Messi, who was in Spain with his sought-after son. After hearing the AFA official introduce himself, Jorge corrected him. “It’s Lionel.” Then came the words everyone had been waiting to hear. “You’ve finally called him! My son wants to play for Argentina.” When the AFA faxed Barcelona the details of Messi’s first call-up, however, his name was awkwardly misspelt as “Leonel Mecci”.
In a parallel universe, would Messi have been part of the Spain side that lifted the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™? What we know for sure is that he will face Spain on Sunday in his second successive FIFA World Cup™ final after Qatar 2022™, and his third overall including the 2014 edition in Brazil. Born in Rosario in 1987, the city where the Argentine flag was first raised, Messi was always destined to spearhead La Albiceleste. Despite plenty of insistence that he join La Roja, Messi always said no. His heart has always belonged to Argentina.
Sources: FIFA Official
