Following his father’s death, Lionel Messi shared some emotional words. The superstar posted on social media on Wednesday.
“I was just playing soccer, and now I have serious doubts about whether I’ll be able to keep doing this for much longer,” Lionel Messi wrote on Instagram. His father had been by his side from the very beginning: “Why couldn’t you have held on just a little bit longer so we could see this through together?”
Messi’s father, Jorge, passed away early Saturday morning at the age of 68 in a hospital in his hometown of Rosario. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you or how I’m supposed to go on,” the eight-time World Player of the Year emphasized: “I know you were suffering and that this is for the best, but you left far too soon. We could have experienced and enjoyed so much more together.” He couldn’t believe his father was gone—“I don’t want to accept it.”
Messi reported that his father had asked him several times to play in one last World Cup in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. The superstar granted this wish and led his team all the way to the final, where Spain proved too strong. At the start of the tournament, however, Messi’s father had been feeling “worse than ever before.” “It was the first time you weren’t there for a tournament,” wrote the Argentine, who had hoped for an improvement in his father’s condition and drawn motivation from that on the way to the final: The goal had been “to get as far as possible to buy you some time so you could at least watch one game.”
Messi: “I had to be there”
Messi had set winning the title again as his goal, partly because of his father. “I didn’t make it; my legs just wouldn’t cooperate anymore,” said the 39-year-old—who has a contract with the U.S. club Inter Miami through the end of 2028—about the loss in the final. “I tried to fight against my body, but I couldn’t. I never really felt good.” Still, his father was right: “I had to be there and play.”
Despite the uncertainty surrounding his father, Messi had played an outstanding World Cup tournament. The Argentine captain scored eight goals and set up four more.
During the World Cup, the serious illness—the details of which were not disclosed—suffered by Messi’s father had caused a stir; a broadcaster in the three-time world champion’s home country even falsely reported his death. The bond between father and son has always been extremely close. Jorge Messi, father of four children, negotiated his son’s major contracts, including Lionel Messi’s transfers to Paris Saint-Germain (2021) and, two years later, to Inter Miami.