The shirt with which the six-year-old Messi saw Maradona live

• Chronicle.Messi dismisses Maradona with an offering

His gaze, glassy, ​​with tears that he struggled to ensure that they did not come to light, already foreshadowed that

had an ace up his sleeve to pay tribute to

.

Or rather, under the shirt.

On the field of play, again, the Argentine gave one of his customary playing recitals.

But the icing was missing: the goal.

He was tempted to achieve it by imitating that hand of God that in England still resists tooth and nail to forgive him in what would be the 1-0 action.

There was a better way.

And he knew how to wait to find her.

After the 4-0, as in a ritual, Messi took off his shirt to show another: one from Newell's with the sports brand and the advertising that Maradona himself wore in his brief stage in the favorite club of his childhood.

Of course, with the 10 on his back.

Excited, he tried to fix it to show it off in the best possible way and immediately sent a kiss to heaven.

"He had thought about it and it has been something very big. In every way," his coach,

, would

highlight

in the press room.

Mateu Lahoz

, despite everything, did not want to join the tribute being condescending and showed him the corresponding yellow card.

This is what the regulation mandates.

Although, for once, nothing would have happened if he had left it in his pocket.

It was the way, more emotional than the one Barça himself had sought, that Messi sought and found in order to have a heartfelt memory of an entire symbol, football and Argentina, who came to play in what were his first colors.

So or more rooted than the Catalans.

Witness to debut with Newell's

After passing through the ranks of Sevilla, in the 1992-93 season, Maradona decided to return to Argentina.

Negotiations with Argentinos Juniors did not come to fruition and

convinced him to sign for Newell's.

In his first training with the 'lepers', in September 1993, more than 40,000 fans embraced him.

The full stadium, on its debut, almost a month later, on October 7, would also be historic.

It was in a friendly against the Ecuadorian Emelec, in which, of course, he would be in charge of scoring the winning goal for the locals.

A subtle touch, with his right leg, the one they said was the bad one, the one he used to lean on, as even himself commented jokingly, slipped almost into the squad.

Messi, that day, was in the stands, watching the game with his father.

He was only six years old and he didn't want to miss it.

"I don't remember much, he was small, but I saw him that day on the court," recalled the Barça star at the time.

His image, without a doubt, was burned into his retina.

Therefore, when the echoes of his unexpected death have not yet been completely silenced, he wanted to honor him by sharing with everyone the image of that shirt that, surely, he will never be able to erase from his memory.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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