12/08/2026
🚨📲 𝗡𝗘𝗪: Lionel Messi on IG:
Dad, I still can’t believe you’re gone. I can’t take it in, or rather, I don’t want to. It’s so hard for me to imagine that I’m never going to see you again, that we’re never going to talk again. I know you were suffering and that this is for the best, but you left far too soon. We still had so much left to enjoy together.
You kept asking me to play in the last World Cup, and just days before it started was when you got much worse. It was the first time you weren’t going to be there for a tournament, but Mum told me you were going to get better and that you’d be well enough to travel. I told you we were going to reach the final so that you could travel.
Every time I finished a match, I waited for and missed your message. That’s when I realised just how serious the situation really was. Even so, I couldn’t stop thinking about going as far as possible, to give you time and so that you could watch a match.
We reached the final and you couldn’t be there. I wanted to win it so I could bring it to you and show you another one. I couldn’t. My legs couldn’t give me any more. This time I tried to push against what my body was telling me, but I couldn’t. I never managed to feel right.
When I came back, you thought we had lost the final on penalties. We couldn’t talk about anything that had happened. You couldn’t enjoy any of it. We weren’t champions, but you have no idea how much we enjoyed every match. Once again, you were right: I had to be there and play it.
I’m telling you this because it was the only thing we never got the chance to talk about, because you already know everything else. We spoke every day and saw each other whenever my commitments allowed it.
I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. I don’t know how to carry on. All I ever did was play football, and now I have serious doubts about whether I’ll keep doing it for much longer. You were by my side from the very beginning; there was so little left until the end. Why couldn’t you hold on just a little longer so we could finish it together?
I know your happiness was seeing your family doing well, your wife, your children, and above all, without the others finding out, watching me play… 😉
It had always been like that since I was little. You took me to every training session as soon as you got home from work. Mum took me to many of them because you were working.
Obviously, you never missed a single match. How much you suffered watching me, and how much you enjoyed it, even though you never gave me much praise.
You were my dad, my friend and my agent. You were always the person you needed to be in every moment, and you were never wrong about anything. Despite some arguments or fights, you were always right. In the end, things always turned out the way you said they would.
I’m going to miss you so much, but you’ll always be present, especially in the way I raise my children, because I teach and raise them the way you raised me.
Rest in peace and look after us from above, just as you did down here. Thank you for everything.
I love you, Dad. ❤️
