Lionel Messi: Why is he ‘forbidden’ to celebrate his goals and victories? | OPINION

Eight years ago, criticism of Lionel Messi he was submissive, a crack almost indifferent to the circumstances. Today, when the ‘Flea’ gets upset without using filters and haranguing in the dressing room, he is reaching the improbable extreme of questioning his correct leadership in the Argentine team. In that volatility of opinion that we see so much on social networks, Messi went from being excessively good people to a provocateur without codes who is unaware of Fair Play.

Neither that Messi from 2014 was Dr. Jekyll, nor this one from Qatar 2022 is Mr. Hyde. As the Argentine journalist Juan Pablo Varsky explained yesterday, this is not a story of dual behavior, but simply that we are facing the consequence of the passing of the years.

Guillem Balague, probably the writer who knows Lionel the best, explained more than once that the ’10’ openly questioned some of the decisions of Pep Guardiola. Perhaps the only change is that now, at 35 years old, the man from Rosario takes less precautions with his forms. He no longer covers his mouth, like when he argued with Sergio Ramos in the Spanish classics, today in front of the microphones of a TV channel He calls the Dutch Weghorst “silly”.

“Sometimes we overanalyze football”explained a few weeks ago Pablo Aimar, Scaloni’s technical assistant and Messi’s childhood idol. The balance of the gestures of the ‘Flea’ is also accompanied by the debate on the “correct ways” to celebrate a goal. We have gone to the extreme of making frame-by-frame threads on social networks to explain why a team, like Argentina, celebrates a World Cup qualification with joy, anger and a dose of confrontation. The Norwegian Geir Jordet did it accompanied by his knowledge in sports psychology. The diagnosis? The Argentines and the Dutch were harassing each other from the final 20 minutes of the second half and that was heating up to the boil.

“Let’s not forget that footballers are people and this sport is the most emotional of all”, repeats Varsky, with the aim of closing the curtain on that “semifinal” trial to which those who did not measure themselves in their celebrations in the World Cup are subjected. In times of ‘memes’ to make fun of rivals (whoever has not shared one cast the first stone), it is quite double talk to criticize those who dance like Lucas Paqueta or if Messi made Topo Gigio’s ears for Van Gaal.

From Juan Carlos Oblitas to Ricardo Gareca himself once repeated this phrase so installed in technicians: “In football, you lose more than you win.” A social network is the eternal temptation to be politically correct, which is why the moral examination of athletes’ celebrations is being exaggerated. Let Messi and everyone else celebrate. Like Neymar against Croatialike the Chilean Vidal when he was left out of Russia 2018, the time will come for everyone to collect the change.

—