You’ll read about how great Lionel Messi’s visit to Mumbai was everywhere else. Here’s a first-person account of the sidelights, too
Lionel Messi shows off his moves at Wankhede Stadium on Sunday. Pic/AFP
What do you do when the God of football visits your city and you get a VVIP pass to meet him in person? You count to 100 and remind yourself to breathe.
But, for a news person mostly tuned to reading the crowd, too, the meet and greet with Lionel Messi at the Cricket Club of India (CCI) on Sunday afternoon was a revelation in egalitarianism. Some of the faces waiting to meet the ‘GOAT’ were popular ones, some attached to great wealth. Yet, the organisers made sure to treat them like they did everyone else there, because… rules! It was wonderful to see celebrities — a shout-out to Shahid Kapoor here — respectfully put away their phones.
Photo of the VVIP pass taken before the phone was whisked away. Pic/Sandra Almeida Thevar
There was no resistance and no body language defiance that said ‘don’t you know who I am?’ Niranjan Hiranandani, high-profile developer and co-sponsor (no less) of the Messi event at Wankhede on Sunday, made no fuss about standing in line with the others and getting a picture taken with Messi that had five other strangers in the frame. A very well-known yesteryear celebrity in the music world — whom we cannot name — was seen arguing with security staff at the gates to CCI for a good two hours. They couldn’t let her in because of pass issues. Sometimes mere celebrity status doesn’t translate into a VVIP pass. Simple!
Coming to Messi, the God is as warm and down-to-earth off field as he is electrifying on it. While the sight of adults among the group left him indifferent, the sight of children, mouths agape at seeing their hero in the flesh, had him beaming. A child’s hesitant plea to Messi to sign a T-shirt was met with a gentle ‘photo first?’
They say you shouldn’t meet your idols in real life. That’s because most times it is hard to reconcile the celebrity with the human. But Messi is among the very few whose personas don’t clash — he is superlative in both. Staying human and grounded when you are revered as God across the planet is no easy feat. A mention must be made here of Luis Suarez and Rodrigo De Paul, who accompanied Messi at the meet-and-greet.
They have a lot to learn from their fellow Argentine. Messi’s presence in Mumbai was thanks to the Maharashtra government’s ambitious sports initiative, ‘Project Mahadeva’, launched on Sunday where 60 talented children (30 girls and 30 boys) from across the state have been handpicked to be trained into eventual medal-winners for the country.
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