Jorge Messi: The father who believed in Lionel before the world did
When 13-year-old Lionel Messi arrived in Barcelona, the dream suddenly felt frighteningly real.
He was thousands of miles from home, struggling to adapt to a new country and an uncertain future. His father, Jorge, was struggling too. They would retreat to separate rooms to cry, then come out pretending everything was fine.
“When we arrived in Barcelona, I used to lock myself in my room to cry alone, and my father did the same -- either without me seeing him or thinking I didn't see him. We pretended we were both fine, but we were struggling,” Messi later recalled.
More than two decades later, Messi would cry again on a football pitch, this time in front of millions. The circumstances were different, but the man at the centre of his thoughts was the same.
After scoring against Algeria at the 2026 World Cup, Messi broke down in tears. He later revealed that he had been going through “some tough days”, insisting that his emotions were not related to football.
Soon afterwards, reports emerged about Jorge's health, and the Messi family asked the media for “humanity” amid persistent speculation. Jorge was undergoing medical treatment.
The image of Messi in tears took on a different weight.
Even while carrying Argentina's hopes on football's biggest stage, he was dealing with something deeply personal involving the man who had been beside him from the very beginning.
Jorge Messi passed away on Saturday aged 68.
For the football world, he was Lionel Messi's father and longtime agent. For Lionel, he was the man who had travelled with him from Rosario to Barcelona, shared the difficult moments and stayed when the easiest choice would have been to go home.
A former metal factory worker, Jorge was his son's first coach in Argentina. He was there at Abanderado Grandoli, the club where Messi first began playing football, long before the world knew the name.
When Barcelona came calling in 2000, Jorge left behind a stable job, his wife Celia and their three other children to accompany his 13-year-old son to Spain.
It was a huge gamble.
The young Messi was leaving behind everything familiar to pursue a footballing opportunity in a foreign country. His family had already faced the uncertainty surrounding his growth treatment, and Barcelona offered hope but no guarantees.
The early days were hard. Jorge and Lionel were lonely, homesick and unsure of what lay ahead. At one point, Jorge asked his son whether he wanted to keep going or return to Argentina.
“When things were tough, my father even asked me what I wanted to do, whether I wanted to keep going or go back home,” Messi said. “I wanted to continue, so he stayed with me.”
That decision became one of the great turning points in football history.
Jorge remained in Barcelona while the rest of the family returned to Argentina. He helped his son navigate life at La Masia and eventually finalised Lionel's first contract with Barcelona.
He later became Messi's agent and sole representative, remaining involved as his son's career took him from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain and, eventually, Inter Miami.
But Jorge's influence was never simply professional.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. “My father helped me enormously. He is very critical of me. That made me always want to push myself further,” Messi told DirecTV Sports in 2022.
It was a telling description of their relationship. Jorge was not just the father who comforted his son when the dream felt too difficult. He was also the critic who pushed him when the rest of the world had already begun calling him extraordinary.
For decades, Jorge largely stayed away from the spotlight. He rarely gave interviews and generally let his son occupy centre stage.
But his life as Messi's agent also brought controversy.
In 2013, Spanish authorities accused Jorge and Lionel of using a network of companies across several countries to collect the footballer's image-rights income and evade taxes between 2007 and 2009. The case was resolved in 2017 with multi-million-euro fines.
In 2019, Jorge, Lionel and the Leo Messi Foundation faced further allegations in Spain involving suspected tax offences, fraud and money laundering. The case was dismissed in 2021.
Those episodes became part of the public record, but they were never the defining story of Jorge's life.
His defining story was the one that began in Rosario.
He watched the boy he had coached become Barcelona's greatest player. He watched him collect eight Ballon d'Ors and rewrite the record books. He endured the difficult years with Argentina, when international success repeatedly slipped away from his son.
And eventually, he saw the moment that completed the journey. Lionel lifted the World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
The frightened teenager who had once cried alone in a room in Barcelona had become world champion.
Jorge had been there for the uncertainty, the loneliness, the criticism, the triumphs and the setbacks.
In 2013, he told Kicker: “The day Leo stops playing, I think a dream will shatter for me, and I won't watch football anymore.”
The dream had started with a boy from Rosario and a father willing to follow him into the unknown. Years later, the world would watch that boy become one of the greatest footballers it had ever seen.
But behind the goals, the trophies and the records was a relationship that began long before the fame.
And perhaps that is why the image of Messi crying on a World Cup pitch felt so revealing. For all the world saw in Lionel Messi, Jorge had always seen his son.
And before millions believed in Lionel Messi, Jorge did.
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