Thank you, Jorge: The father who sacrificed everything to create the greatest of all time

Jorge Messi, thank you.

Your decisions, your upbringing, and your nurturing all led to Leo Messi, the greatest footballer of all time: A player who has provided so many unforgettable moments of genius. So first of all, thank you for what you did, for what you sacrificed, and for what you created.

Just think about what would have happened if, when the family ran out of money for the boy’s hormone treatment, his parents had decided to emigrate to Australia, where job opportunities awaited the father. That was a serious consideration. In the end, they decided to emigrate to Barcelona - not because of employment, but because there was a future there for Leo. There, in Catalonia, he received the treatment at the club’s expense.

Think about what would have happened if the 13-year-old boy had arrived in Australia. Do you think we would have heard of him if he had scored his first goal in the Melbourne derby? Would he have become who he is if he had landed in Sydney or Canberra? How fortunate that he arrived in Barcelona, a club steeped in the knowledge of Johan Cruyff and an understanding of the game at the highest level in the world. And thank you to Jorge for staying there.

The initial period in Spain was very difficult for the family, especially culturally and emotionally. Lionel’s younger sister, Maria Sol, struggled to adapt to school, and his older brothers faced similar difficulties. Within a few months, his mother, Celia, returned to Argentina with the other children.

Jorge and Leo remained alone in an apartment near the Camp Nou. During that time, the two truly leaned on each other. While the young talent progressed at the La Masia academy and continued his medical treatments, his father - who had been a chemical technician and a steel factory manager in Rosario - decided to dedicate his life to his son’s career. Such a decision requires courage, unshakeable faith, and a commitment to provide love and support to the child no matter what happens. That cannot be taken for granted, and for that, he deserves our gratitude.

However, his work, of course, did not begin at age 13.

Jorge was the first person who made Leo love the game - to love it so much that he dedicated his life to achieving excellence in the same sport his father had taught him when he was just two years old. The boy began playing in an organized setting at age four at Grandoli, a neighborhood club in his hometown. Who stood on the sidelines of that first team? Jorge, who volunteered as a youth coach and taught the greatest footballer in history that football is a team game, and that to excel, you need to make your teammates on the pitch better.

Messi learned that from his father, who coached him out of an immense passion for the game. He instilled in him the fundamentals of technique, basic tactical structure, and organized movement - knowledge upon which this unstoppable football phenomenon was built. Above all, he planted something even more important in him: An unconditional love for the ball.

At the same time, Jorge was his son’s sharpest critic. Instead of settling for praise of Leo's natural ability, he analyzed the matches with a critical eye, pointing out inaccurate passes, poor decision-making, or positional errors. Leo has recounted in the past that these detailed post-match analyses planted in him the constant drive - and the knowledge - to improve. The boy knew this criticism came from a place of great love, understood that his father wanted the best for him, and therefore listened and internalized it. That is the foundation of learning; these are the fundamentals upon which the greatest body of knowledge of all time was built.

Along with the emphasis on discipline, spatial awareness, and repeated touch drills, the father refrained from limiting Leo’s natural dribbling instinct. And for that, too, we must say thank you. He allowed him to play freely on makeshift pitches, while utilizing organized training at the club solely to build tactical discipline.

According to Prof. Daniel Memmert, who is responsible for training development at the German Sport University Cologne, this is likely one of the factors that led to this extraordinary creativity. Memmert explains that this trait is "embedded" in all of us at an early age, when the brain is still flexible and forming, and is acquired through countless hours of "unstructured play."

Neuroscientists argue that such play allows children to find solutions on their own, and Memmert found that the key to the Argentine's creativity lay in those hours of free football in parks and on the streets which his father encouraged. Think about it. Little Messi played in the neighborhood under Jorge’s watchful eye - without a referee, and sometimes without field boundaries. He was physically smaller than everyone else, so he had to find creative solutions for hours on end against boys who were larger and stronger than he was.

We ordinary human beings cannot extract too much from this, but we can create a similar environment for our children and support them by fostering an atmosphere of play and creativity. Jorge, who passed away at the age of just 68, created precisely that environment - an environment that cultivated the greatest player of all time.

For all of this, there remains only one thing to say: Gracias, señor Messi.