Lionel Messi, current best footballer in the world — no, we don’t give a damn who won the Ballon d’Or this year — lives a blessed life. He gets to live in Barcelona, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and play the beautiful game for ludicrous amounts of money. His wife is 5-alarm-fire hot and he has adoring fans on every corner of the globe. Lionel Messi might just have it too good.
This is the part where we get to play supermarket tabloid. “Is there trouble in paradise?” And yes, we are ashamed of ourselves for even suggesting such a fact. We do not believe Messi is headed to Chelsea. The only place Messi is headed is the place he has headed for the majority of his soccer ball-kicking life: Barcelona.
The only way Lionel Messi is leaving Barcelona in his prime is if Seal Team 6 kidnaps him and spirits him away to the U.S. where he magically appears on the L.A. Galaxy as a previously unknown soccer wunderkind named “Lawrence Smith,” who they claim to have discovered at a Sunday league game a la the movie “Goal,” then leads the U.S. to triumph in the 2018 World Cup.
We are almost positive the above scenario is not going to happen. (If it did, however, you would not find us complaining.)
We do have a suggestion for young Lionel (even though he is older than us). If rumors of him leaving Barcelona are at all true, there is only one inarguably perfect destination for him: the place where the tequila flows like wine.
Mexico.
We have the perfect club for him, too: Queretaro, home of Messi’s mentor and former partner-in-goal scoring, Ronaldinho. We mean, come on, just look at the two of them in action:
We understand this is hard to grasp for Messi fans, but there are many reasons this would be a good move for him. Not least of which: just imagine Messi and Ronaldinho gleefully wreaking havoc on Liga MX. Any football fan who just imagined the goals they could combine to score and won’t admit to being at least a little curious is either a pathological liar or on some kind of drug we’ve never even heard of.
Also, Messi is adored unconditionally in Catalonia, which will likely continue until the sun burns out into a husk. The rest of Spain, not so much, on account of the whole “Messi keeps stomping all over their teams’ hopes and dreams” thing.
Argentina won’t love Messi like they love Maradona until Messi brings them the World Cup, which has nothing to do with his club team situation.
If Messi moved to Mexico, though, that would add to the list of countries he is unconditionally adored in. Mexican soccer fans are some of the most sophisticated soccer fans in the world. Even the fans of rival teams would love him because they appreciate good soccer above all else.
Of course, money is an issue too. Messi gets paid a lot, and for good reason. But Queretaro would be able to afford to pay him his due because they would start raking in money hand over fist. Messi gets paid a lot because Messi generates a lot of cash for his club. Queretaro would be no exception.
We have talked ourselves into this, and we hope we have talked you, and Messi, if he’s out there reading (hi, call us sometime), into this. It would be glorious. We were so excited for half a second until we realized the chances of this happening are smaller than Messi himself.
But we can dream, can’t we?
@SamKlomhaus
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Cristiano Ronaldo And The Record That Messi May Never Beat
Before Messi Was Messi: How He Became The Best
