Lionel Messi's most trusted sounding board is gone. His father, Jorge Messi—who doubled as agent, fixer, and emotional anchor throughout the football star's career—died Saturday at 68 in their hometown of Rosario, Argentina, reports the Athletic. Rosario's Sanatorio Centro medical center would not share details about the cause of death, citing the family's privacy, reports CNN. A factory supervisor and devoted Newell's Old Boys fan, Jorge was the first to insist that the undersized kid with growth problems had something extraordinary. He was the one who packed a suitcase and moved 13-year-old Lionel to Barcelona in 2000, a gamble that reshaped modern soccer. "My old man was always by my side," Messi said in a 2007 interview. "Sometimes, I would shut myself in my room to cry alone, or he'd do the same, without me seeing him. We'd pretend we were both OK, but we weren't."
Publicly quiet but fiercely involved, Jorge ran the business side of the Messi empire, negotiated mega-deals, and sat alone in the stands, trying to jolt his son back into games with a look or a gesture. In rare interviews, he batted away claims that Lionel didn't love soccer and embraced comparisons to Diego Maradona as a point of pride. Through Lionel's most agonizing near-misses with Argentina and his eventual crowning moments—Copa América 2021, the 2022 World Cup, an eighth Ballon d'Or—Jorge remained in the background, the parent who had once asked a crying teenager in Barcelona: do you want to go home, or keep going? Lionel chose to stay. Jorge stayed with him.
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