Messi Read Online Free PDF Page B

last ten days. They sat on the substitutes’ bench.
    The game started. And Charly Rexach still hadn’t arrived.
    He was coming late after a lunch. Recently back from Australia, he was between time zones.
    Two minutes later, Charly climbs up the steps leading to the pitch.
    Charly Rexach: I did the usual; walked about a bit, and stopped when I saw him get the ball.
    Rexach comes through the door, passes the corner flag and goes behind the goal.
    Charly Rexach: He was easy to spot, because he was tiny, quite a sight, no?
    Messi gets the ball in the centre of the pitch and starts to dribble towards whoever stands in his way.
    Jorge Messi: Carlos [Charly] came in and Leo made a move.
    Charly Rexach: Like I said; I went behind the goal, and kept walking …
    Leo dribbles past two, rounds the goalkeeper. Scores.
    Jorge Messi: Great play. Goal!
    It was their only goal of a game that Leo’s team ended up losing 2–1.
    Rexach gets to the substitutes’ bench – not the first but the second – where all the coaches have gathered.
    Charly Rexach: It took me seven or eight minutes to complete the lap. I went to sit down on the bench, and …
    Ten minutes after he had arrived, Charly Rexach left pitch number three. He had sat down for a couple of minutes on the youth coaches’ bench, turned around and gone out again the way he had come in.
    All that waiting. And he hardly saw a thing!
    Jorge Messi thought Rexach had not given Leo the attention he deserved after the journey, the days of waiting. Had Charly noticed the couple of things that Messi did? Jorge was asking himself. Surely that was enouh to keep him at the club. Hopefully.
    At the end of the game, Leo said nothing. Always quiet, he just listened.

   1   
    ‘Pass it, Leo!’ But He Never Did
    E very Sunday: last one there is a rotten egg!
    Without fail, Leo would arrive at his grandmother Celia’s house and there, on a small concrete patch in front of the house, would play rondos (toros, or, in English, piggy in the middle) with his brothers Rodrigo and Matías, though in those days it wasn’t called rondos. Or they would play foot tennis. Then his cousins would arrive, Maxi and Emanuel. A third cousin, Bruno, would also be born to Claudio and Marcela, Leo’s aunt and uncle, some years later .
    Two rocks served as goalposts. The first to score six goals. So the game began .
    Leo’s grandmother and her daughters, Celia and Marcela, busied themselves in the kitchen preparing pasta with a rich sauce. The husbands, Jorge and Claudio, and his grandfather, Antonio, chatted animatedly on the sofa in the small, narrow, dining room, or on the doorstep, ears and eyes ever alert for the children at play. Look at that touch, notice how Emanuel dribbles with the ball, Leo as small as he is and how difficult it is to get the ball off him …
    ‘Good, Maxi, good, shouted Jorge, who had played in the lower ranks of Newell’s Old Boys until called up for military service .
    Time to eat! The children drifted in, hungry but reluctant to leave the game .
    Hands had to be washed before everyone sat around the table of that humble two-bedroom house that no one ever wanted to leave, and that served as a meeting point for hundreds of Sundays for brothers-in-law Claudio and Jorge, sisters Celia and Marcela, andfor the cousins who always wanted to play football. Sometimes the sofa doubled as a bed for one of the grandchildren, whichever one insisted on staying over on that particular day. They adored their grandmother Celia and it wasn’t just because of the delicious pasta, or the rice, every scrap of which was finished off. Celia was one of those grandmothers who could never say no to her grandchildren .
    Food was eaten in a rush. Everything was delicious, but with the ball tucked under an arm, the five youngsters, still savouring the taste of dulce de leche (milk candy), headed off to the square in the Bajada part of town .
    And it was there that they would finish what they had