FC Barcelona icon Lionel Messi has addressed the passing of his father Jorge Messi in an emotional statement on Instagram.
Telemadrid
FC Barcelona legend Lionel Messi has addressed the death of his father Jorge Messi in an emotional statement on Instagram, which also hinted at retiring in the near future.
Jorge died before the weekend at the age of 68 following a long battle with illness.
Messi’s former team, FC Barcelona, and his boyhood club, Newell’s Old Boys, released statements.
Yet Messi himself had been silent until now, after flying to his hometown Rosario in Argentina to attend Jorge’s funeral after he was excused by his current club Inter Miami.
“Pa, I still can’t believe you’re gone. I don’t fall, or rather, I don’t want to fall. It’s very difficult for me to imagine that I’m not going to see you anymore, that we’re not going to talk anymore. I know you were hurting and it’s for the best, but you left too soon. We still had a lot to enjoy together,” Messi wrote on Instagram, where he has 515 million followers.
“You asked me so much to play in the last World Cup and days before the start was when you reached your worst. It was the first time you weren’t going to be at a tournament, but mom told me that you were going to be better and that you were going to be fine to be able to travel. I told you that we were going to reach the final so you could travel,” Messi added, which makes his run to the last hurdle, where Argentina lost to Spain, even more admirable considering what his family were going through.
Messi said that “every time a game ended, I expected and missed your message. That’s when I realized that the situation was real.”
“Even so, I kept thinking about getting as far as possible, to give you time to watch a game. We reached the final and you couldn’t be there. I wanted to win it to take the trophy and show you a new one. I couldn’t, my legs couldn’t take it anymore. This time I tried to go against my physique, but I couldn’t. I could never feel good,” Messi confessed.
“When I arrived you thought we had lost the final on penalties. We couldn’t talk about anything that happened. You couldn’t enjoy anything. We weren’t champions, but you don’t know how much we enjoyed every game. Again, you were right: I had to be there and play it.
“I’m telling you this because it was the only thing we couldn’t talk about, because you already know everything else. We talked every day and saw each other when we could because of my commitments.”
Messi Hints At Retirement Soon
Messi admitted that he doesn’t know “what I’m going to do without you,” and that he doesn’t “know how to continue” without his father and representative Jorge.
“I only played football and now I have quite a few doubts that I will continue to do so for a long time to come. You were by my side from the beginning, we were so close to the end. Why didn’t you hold on for that little longer and we could finish together?,” he continued.
“I know that your happiness was to see your family, your wife, your children well and, above all, without others knowing, to see me play…
“Since I was a little boy it was always like that. You took me to all the training sessions as soon as you got home from work. Mom took me to many because you were working.
“Obviously, you didn’t miss the games. How you suffered watching me and how you enjoyed yourself, although you never gave me many compliments.”
Messi called Jorge “a father, a friend and a manager.”
“You were always the person you had to be at all times and you were never wrong about anything. Beyond a few reproaches or fights, you were always right. In the end it ended up happening as you said.
“I am going to miss you a lot, but you will always be present, and especially in the education of my children, because I teach them and educate them as you did with me.
“Rest in peace and take care of us from above as you did here. Thank you for everything. I love you, pa,” Lionel Messi then concluded.
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