If you don’t know who Lionel Messi is you won’t enjoy this book much. If you do, you probably will. But if you know who Messi is and you’ve got at least a 2:1 in English, comp. lit. or similar, you are going to absolutely love it. This is definitely one for the football aficionado as well as for fans of fine writing.
Messi is an Argentinian footballer who’s played for Barcelona for his entire professional career. He’s short. He’s modest. And he never takes a dive. Apart from his appalling tattoos, he’s the very opposite of what you might expect of the modern footballer — an Argentinian Roy of the Rovers. (Indeed, apart from Pelé, he’s the only South American footballer that my father, an ancient, tough-as-nails Alf Tupper-type, has ever had any time for.)
Jordi Puntí is a Catalan novelist and journalist, and he loves Messi. He really loves him. He adores him. He worships him:
If today the Messi myth is already planetary, imagine what will happen in 50 years when the deeds of the best players in history are remembered. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it is claimed one day that Messi was essentially an Aztec or Mayan or at the very least a pre-Columbian god.
Messi: Lessons in Style represents Puntí’s attempt to capture what he calls ‘the beauty, the hunger, the genius, the modernity, the obsession and the instinct, among many other things, of a footballer who is the best in history’. If you don’t believe that Messi is the best in history, just stop reading for a moment, click onto YouTube and remind yourself of some of the goals.
See? Even just a few weeks ago, aged 31, in Barcelona’s opening group stage Champions League game against PSV Eindhoven, Messi scored a hat-trick.
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