Lionel Messi’s letter to his late father, Jorge Messi ❤️
“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?”