Lionel Messi in Argentina to say goodbye to his deceased father

Lionel Messi arrived in Argentina on Saturday to say goodbye to his father Jorge Messi, who died the same day, leaving the global star orphaned by the loss of a man who was both his business agent and his unwavering supporter since the difficult years of his adolescence in Barcelona.

In a private plane from the United States, the Argentine star arrived with his partner Antonella Rocuzzo and his children, most of them dressed in black, AFP observed on site.

After landing at 8:40pm local time (11:40pm GMT), according to airport authorities, Messi got into a van escorted by police cars.

Jorge Messi will be buried in a cemetery in Pérez, a town near his hometown of Rosario, north of Buenos Aires.

The father of the eight-time Ballon d'Or winner passed away overnight at the age of 68 in a clinic in his hometown of Rosario. The cause of death has not been released.

The Argentine Football Association and Barça, which welcomed Messi at the age of 13, were among the first to offer their condolences. "FC Barcelona thanks Jorge Messi for his commitment to our club, for entrusting him with the beginnings and the years of his son Leo's brilliant football career," the Blaugrana club wrote in a statement.

A guiding figure throughout his son's career, Jorge Messi had been his first coach, the father who had left everything to accompany him to Spain, and then the agent who negotiated astronomical contracts on his behalf.

Messi also talked a lot about football with him: "My father helped me enormously. He is very critical of me. This made me always want to surpass myself," the 2022 world champion said in an interview.

A metalworker employed in Rosario, 340 km north of Buenos Aires, Jorge coached youth teams at the small Grandoli club in Rosario. He was the one who gave the future captain of Argentina his start, at the age of four, on the "potreros" of his neighborhood, those bumpy vacant lots where Argentine children played.

- Companion through difficult years -

His life changed dramatically in 2000 when FC Barcelona invited the young prodigy, then 13 years old, to come and settle in Catalonia to continue his treatment for a growth deficiency, while playing for the club's youth teams.

Jorge then left behind his stable job in Argentina, his wife and three other children, and settled in Spain with Lionel.

"When we arrived in Barcelona, I would lock myself in my room to cry alone, and my father would do the same thing, without me seeing him or thinking I didn't see him. We both acted like we were fine, but we were in a bad way," Messi said in an interview given when he was 20 years old.

"When things were going badly, my father even asked me what I wanted to do, whether I wanted to continue or go home. I wanted to continue and he stayed with me."

- Controversies -

Subsequently, Jorge signed his son's first contract with FC Barcelona, becoming his agent and sole representative, first in Barcelona, then at Paris SG and in Miami.

Discreet, Jorge Messi almost never gave interviews during his life, but on the rare occasions when he did speak, he revealed an unbreakable bond with Lionel: "The day Leo stops playing, I think a part of the dream will collapse for me and I will no longer watch football," he told Kicker magazine in 2013. He died before Messi announced the end of his career.

His life, however, has not been without controversy. In 2013, the father and son were accused by the Spanish courts of having used a scheme between 2007 and 2009 to collect the footballer's image rights while evading taxation in Spain. The case was resolved in 2017 after fines amounting to several million euros, but both avoided prison.

Following a complaint, they were again prosecuted in 2019 for alleged offenses against the public treasury, fraud and money laundering, but the case was dismissed in 2021, the court having recognized that no criminal act could be attributed to them.