DOHA, Qatar – Fernanda Quiroga still remembers how Lionel Messi played soccer in what were then dirt roads around their working class neighborhood in Rosario, Argentina’s third-largest city.
“(Messi) was always kicking something, a ball, a bottle cap,” said Quiroga, who at 35 is the same age as the captain of Argentina’s national soccer team.
“The memory I have of him because he lived right in front of my house, is going to buy sweet pastries at his grandmother’s around the block and he was always kicking something,” added Quiroga according to AP.
Excitement for Sunday’s World Cup final, when Argentina will face defending champion France in Qatar, is rising fast and anxiety is running particularly high in Messi’s hometown as many are hoping this will be the year when Messi finally wins the one major trophy that has been missing from his illustrious career.
“Even though it pains us all, it’s been said this is Leo’s last World Cup, so we’re all hoping he wins it, I think more for him than for the national team itself,” Quiroga said. “I think what weighs more this time around is that we want him to get it because he has generated so much love and respect.”
After beating Croatia in the semi-finals Tuesday, Messi said Sunday’s match would likely be his last in a World Cup.
The neighbourhood popularly known as La Bajada has turned into a sort of altar for Messi with murals and graffiti that praise the soccer star.
“From another galaxy and from my neighborhood,” reads graffiti that is seemingly ubiquitous in the area.
A large mural of Messi looking up at the sky is painted on the side of his old house that still belongs to his family.
“The little guy was very spicy. If he got mad, he grabbed the ball and took it away,” said Marcelo Almada, a 37-year-old construction worker who played soccer with Messi in the streets around the neighbourhood where he still lives. “He didn’t like to lose. But he was a very good kid.”
With the World Cup, “there has been an explosion in the neighborhood,” where “we’re all like brothers,” he added, noting that after every Argentina victory people celebrate in the streets until the early hours of the morning.
The neighbourhood has also turned into a place of pilgrimage, with fans from all over the world coming to visit Messi’s old house and the small soccer field in the corner where he started to learn the skills that would eventually turn him into an all-time great.
Another person who is hoping for a Messi victory is 55-year-old Andrea Liliana Sosa, who was Messi’s math and science teacher in fifth and sixth grade.
“He was a quiet and dutiful student, responsible with what he had to do for school and well loved by his classmates, especially during the breaks to play ball,” Sosa said in one of the classrooms of the school that has chipped paint across many of its walls. “He was very focused on soccer.
“(A victory Sunday) would be like the cherry that he’s missing, so let’s hope he makes it, but he has done enough already to be recognized and loved by everyone,” she added.
School children are living the World Cup “with a beautiful passion” and want Argentina to win “for Messi,” said Milena Fernandez, a 13-year-old student who was standing in front of a large mural of the soccer star on the school’s grounds.
Across the street from the school, another large mural of Messi adorns the side of a residential building that has also turned into a place of pilgrimage for fans.
“We’ve even seen people praying here,” said 21-year-old Valentina Rota, who lives in the building. “There’s a whole feeling of belonging because he was born around the corner, he’s one of us, he’s a neighbour.”
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