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One of the most classic fallacies, traditionally, is that of assuming a goal in the metonymy of a footballer: a moving Polaroid cannot summarize a all accomplished. If it is true that we are more or less always what we do, that our actions qualify us, there is also moments of being that deepen, give us awareness of our primordial essence. The goal that Walter Junior Messias scored against Parma, for example, is a kind of “Talisman of Happiness” by Ada Boni: it simply and directly encodes the recipe of a cult player.
In the stop in the air of Molina’s launch, in the way he tames the ball with his chest, in the fluidity of the movement with which he prepares for the conclusion, also with the weak foot, the right, one, two, three steps, tac, there is everything that makes him one of the funniest footballers in our Serie A. But it is in the brushstroke he draws immediately after: a rainbow under which you want to rush to see if you ever find the pot with the coins. gold: hidden wonder, the kind of relaxed wonder one feels in front of a field of sunflowers, on a deserted beach at sunset after four hours of travel.
There is a verse from a song by Rino Gaetano, entitled “For example, I like the south”, in which, among the adorable things, it is quoted “walking with that farmer, who can go the same way as me, talking about grapes, talking about wine, which is still a luxury for those who make it. ”Here: on the second goal of the afternoon on 30 Crotone (first he arrived with a half turn in the area, after a check with his left foot which for me is 75% of the goal), there is all the empathy we can feel for a humble but talented boy, for whom football is in him at the same time a luxury and an ancient art.
Even the tongue of glee, rather than an idea of irreverence, seems to suggest a certain genuine shame: Messias Junior, after all, is also a name that ends up referring to an idea of the son of a lesser god,
There is a picture, taken in the mid 10’s, on the running track of a well-kept grass field, wooden bleachers, a frame of cypress trees. In the center of the scene there are some soccer players, dressed in a greenish yellow suit reminiscent of the Amarelha; On an external branch, with a trophy in his hands, his socks pulled down, there is a boy with a distracted gaze and a Brazilian flag tied around his neck.
If we did not know its history, if we did not stop at all the details of that photo, we could imagine that they are the celebrations that follow the success of a parallel Seleçao, which somewhere, in one of the multiverse, has its own in Messias . driver. The sparkling projection of your dreams. On the other hand, that is not the Seleçao, but the Sport Warique, a group of fans made up mostly of Peruvian immigrants, which plays in the Piedmontese Uisp championship and which, this time, has in that young Brazilian with a prophetic name, more than a leader, a Martian out of context, too out of dimension. So oversized that in 5 years (although not exactly without difficulties) he would have landed in Serie A, and would have scored one of the best goals of the season, a few days before Christmas.
5 – Junior Messias scored five of his 11 goals in Serie A and B in December. Advent.#CrotoneParma pic.twitter.com/q1ve5eelOz
– OptaPaolo (@OptaPaolo) December 22, 2020
Messias arrived in Italy in 2011, at the age of twenty. Born in São Cândido, a strip of houses in the highlands of Minas Gerais, halfway between Belo Horizonte and the Atlantic Ocean, he cultivated the dream of becoming a professional footballer for one of Brazil’s historic teams, Cruzeiro. That Italy was at your destination may be a curious coincidence, or even simply a pun: The Cruzeiro, after all, was founded by Italian settlers in the 1910s as a beautiful extension of the Palestra Italia Paulista. And the current name, which designates the constellation of the Southern Cross, is actually an anti-Italianist statement: the Southern Cross can only be seen in the southern hemisphere, and therefore not in Italy, a country that in the 1940s, Those of brand change, were rivals of Brazil who sided with the Allies in WWII.
Messias was good, but obviously not good enough to show off. Or maybe it was just bad luck, or maybe that’s how his story had to go, so it could be more incredible. Instead of continuing to play in Ideal, a team from the third series of the state of Minas Gerais, he decides to try everything, join his brother in Italy, in Turin, tryonce in place. It is a naive thought, as naive is his way of playing, kissed by talent, imprinted on the strands of genetic makeup. Messias is acrobatic, capricious, funny: traits that he has managed to maintain until now, but that, contextualized in the Sport Warique games, must have seemed phenomenal. I cannot imagine what expression he could have in those fields, inventing a magic like this one that he starred in last season, the first in Crotone, against Pisa, if not that of astonishment. That amazement that awakens you with feelings of guilt for the brutality with which you are forced to suffocate it.
Oscar Arturo Vargas owns a trucking company. He is Peruvian, he is one of the directors of Sport Warique and he offers this ambitious and somewhat confused young man, recently arrived from Brazil, a place as a delivery man, as well as a shirt with his team.
I wonder if he at least believed, a little, in the rise of the Messiah, or if it was enough to be able to boast of that phenomenon. Not many professional footballers make it out of the slums of amateur tournaments – Messias is a crazy splinter. C.as Olivier Guez relates in his In praise of the feint It was born as a sublimation of a conservative sentiment, rather than as a provocation: pretending is a way of reclaiming one’s own nature. Watch him in this action from last year’s B championship, in Livorno:
You can see from a mile away that Messias is not a trained label, he never tries to give a sensation, he does not play to win public admiration – the way he dances between opponents is not only functional for game progression, but about everything. sincere. We see that in that slalom, in that caressing the ball and following it with the movements of the body, Junior yes pound.
When Ezio Rossi, a former footballer from Turin in the 1980s, who in his spare time makes himself available to coach a team of political refugees playing in the same tournament as Sport Warique, notices it, he is ecstatic. He reports it to Fossano, who offers Messias a very low salary: Junior has a young son, a family to support, to Rossi he says “I ate rice and stones just to play football, but now I have to think about they”.
If Christmas movies have taught us anything, it is that at some point turn which tips the plane, and begins to make every turn in the characters’ lives turn into a happy ending. Ezio Rossi is hired by Casale, and if you are reading this article at this time of year it will be clear to you who was the first player he wanted among the nerostellati. I wouldn’t want this conclusion of mine to seem simplistic, but if Messias, today, gives the impression of being technically above Crotone’s teammates in Serie A, who knows what effect it must have had to go out onto the pitch with Casale and score goals. like this. .
At the end of the season, after scoring 14 goals and having been promoted to Serie D, Messias moved to Chieri, with whom he won the Italian Cup in the category. It’s obvious, but is it really obvious at twenty-six? – who is destined to make the leap, at any time. And in fact comes the call for Pro Vercelli, who at the time played in B and classifies Rolando Bianchi or Vives. For Junior, the Plot twist, the consecration, except that the transfer is blocked by a legal objection: the professional clubs of B, in fact, cannot register non-EU players who come from the minor leagues. His dream fades, he begins to believe that Really you can never do it. Among the many possible destinations that Gozzano chooses, an ambitious club that aims to promote Lega Pro: Messias has already decided that this will be the choice with which to get the professional card.
Who knows if there is not a correlation – I wish there was – between his centrality in Crotone’s offensive game, both in the last season and this one, between his overwhelming presence, and the desire to be there, to assert itself. Today Messias shoots almost three times a game: it is the man, among the Pythagoreans, who tries harder, even more than Simy. He tries to find the goal with the same stubbornness with which he paved the way of his career. Perhaps because of the advancement of his role on the field – Stroppa often moves him from outside the field to the center, where he asks him to support the Nigerian second-striker – perhaps even more simply out of an instinct, even selfish, to fame, Messias shoots. And sometimes it marks: at the end of picaresque rides face to face with the defender; after joking with them, very serious; kicking delicious punishments. But also and especially when carrying out, sublimate what seems to be the most distinctive feature of his game, namely jerks, continuous jerks, accelerations, sometimes brutal and aggressive, deadly stretches accompanied by an always polite touch of the ball, respectful and at the same time elegant and proud as a brocade.
And then there is the eternal return of the feint, of the vertiginous movement that discovers hierarchies, that escapes the controls. That deceives and excites, that humiliates and entertains, that brings the audience to the stands, assuming there will still be an audience in the stands, to stand up, hold their breath, galvanize for a heel tap as before, for a fake. body, by a balloon that produces the sound of the trains when they enter the tunnel.
Whenever Messias engages in a 1v1 duel (and tries, on average, 4 and a half times every ninety minutes, achieving at least half), he is actually challenging not only the opponent, or multiples of, but mostly to himself, to the perception we have of Messias, to the common sense according to which a player, at twenty-nine, can no longer flourish, because it is too late.
Messias Junior is the denial, and at the same time the confirmation, of a whole series of clichés: it is a manifesto of perseverance me the personification of a footballer genius loci. It is a story of sacrifice and deprivation, but also of success.
He is one of the most fun players to watch in our Serie A, as well as calcifying a lot of factors that lead you to love him unconditionally. Above all because it entails a fundamental teaching in the last resort: to always be yourself, with humility and coherence, beyond the goals that we have set ourselves, will always lead to the achievement of the most important objective, that is, to learn to stay themselves. Staying, both on the Uisp and A championship courts, with a shark on your chest, recognizable, unmistakable.
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