FIELD NOTES: Play Like You Don't Have a Plan
The Lionel Messi lesson on how true brilliance is found in the unfolding, not in the pre-conceived "how."
With 2023 around the corner, let us reflect on new dreams, desires you would like to pursue. For it is never too late to get them out. In this story, we pay tribute to someone who stuck to a childhood dream and made it happen. A journey that teaches us the power of manifestation—turning something from an idea into a reality. A story about someone who believed he would one day win the FIFA World Cup with Argentina. Today I give you none other than Leo Messi, considered the world's greatest ever footballer.
Manifesting a dream
How Lionel Messi did it.
Imagine that you discover your future at the age of four. When Lionel Messi was asked to join his older brothers on the pitch, hit the ball, a spirit awoke.
It showed he was going to be great, would face many sacrifices for a dream of success in what he loved indisputably - football. His first trophy was celebrated one year later, and so on it went… Until all seemed threatened when he turned eleven.
Messi got diagnosed with a growth hormone disorder (GHD)1. A rare condition that affects only 1 in 7,000 babies. Costs would balloon to thousand dollar per month. Born into a factory worker's family with an insurance covering a mere 2 years, he fell into a medical crisis.
Lionel would later emphasise in his interviews "You have to fight to achieve your dreams. You have to sacrifice and work hard for it."
Back then in hometown Rosario, he was playing at Newell's, gaining interest from clubs like River Plate2. Once his treatment was called, both parties proved incapable. There was little hope him reaching the summits of the game until FC Barcelona came along. "I had to surmount so many things during that path, it was tough," Lionel admits.
One of the biggest clubs understood the promise of the Argentine. They agreed to sign Messi on the back of a napkin and pay for his treatment. Shortly after he and his father would leave for Catalonia. Thus at age thirteen, leaving everything behind with surmounting pressures of failing expectations, and an uncertain remedy, Messi was painfully shy and homesick. Playing at FC Barcelona, he could not fathom it. Yet, little by little his belief started growing and where he was at that time (ESPN report, 2004)3.
Leo had to give himself a shot every day and night in order to wake up is hormone and continue with a normal growth. He turned his pain, loneliness into a motivator.
Eighteen-year-old Messi soon rises to Barcelona first-team starter, playing alongside Ronaldinho. And by a few months thereafter, to one of the biggest players in the world. Ever since he has dazzled everyone.
Overcoming a medical condition and adapting to a new environment isn't easy. Willpower and an organisation that believes in you can make almost anything happen. Messi could not have imagined being compared to Maradona. Or one day win the FIFA World Cup with Argentina—a goal he carried with him since 2004. "I made sacrifices leaving Argentina—leaving my family to begin a new life," Lionel tells, "I changed my friends, my people, everything. But everything I did, I did for soccer—to achieve my dream."
Leo considered himself lazy in everything. But he knew what he wanted and manifested it effectively. He then shares the following with the world: "When the day comes that I no longer enjoy it, I will stop playing football."
I would like to end this piece with some poetic writing from the heart.
Clear through day and night - you would be at peace, able to follow the gentle ripples of water without a fleeting sense of guilt. That little head of yours full of possibilities, knowing that the test of time would create marvellous realisations. Then life happens, shading that magical lens with expectations. When lost, rediscovering your childhood, that old lens might prove useful—for manifesting dreams is staying true to what you love, and fighting for it once seized.
Lionel Messi didn't become the greatest by studying a manual on "how." His genius wasn't planned; it was revealed through a billion imperfect touches of the ball. He trusted the process, not the blueprint.
My question for our community is this: What is the ambitious "World Cup" you dream of winning, but have kept yourself on the sidelines for because you don't have the perfect game plan? And more importantly, what is the smallest, most intuitive "first touch of the ball" you can take this week—not to win the game, but simply to start playing?
I look forward to reading your reflections in the private members' discussion.
Trust the hunch. Find the story.
Antoine
Daily Dose Of Football 2021, The RISE Of Lionel Messi, accessed 21 December 2022, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EStFajuLSg&t=24s/>.
FC Barcelona 2020, Young MESSI *FIRST WORDS* at Barça 2001 (UNSEEN FOOTAGE), accessed 22 December 2022, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FRyEj1cOG0/>.
Messi TheBoss 2019, The Life of The 16 Year Old Lionel Messi ● Rare Interview, accessed 22 December 2022, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR1sEXULERU&t=5s/>.