By Sebastian Fest
How do you make a “viajero”?
Get yourself a plastic bottle of some soft drink. The bigger the better. Empty it, cut it in the middle, find a lighter and burn the edges so they lose their sharpness.
Now, put whatever you want in it, and you have your “traveller” (viajero) ready to drink.
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Lionel Messi’s tipple of choice was dark, and almost certainly alcoholic — probably a combination of fernet and Coca-Cola, the most Argentinian of drinks for perhaps the most Argentine event imaginable: a triumphant parade through Buenos Aires to show off the World Cup.
Sitting in the back seat on the roof of a convertible bus, flanked by Angel Di Maria and Rodrigo De Paul, the best footballer in the world — and maybe in history — was once again the star of the biggest party Buenos Aires has ever staged.
Four million people, or maybe more, were out on the streets to celebrate on Tuesday — around one in four of the population. The skies have matched the perfect blue that adorns the Albiceleste shirts, with summer temperatures hitting 35C (95F).
Amid the joy, there was — inevitably — chaos. The crowds, who had started gathering in the early hours of Tuesday morning in an effort to catch sight of the team bus, quickly swelled to unmanageable numbers. Two fans desperate to get closer to their heroes threw themselves off motorway bridges in an attempt to land on the top deck; one missed, hit the side of the bus and fell to the ground, suffering serious injuries. Elsewhere, supporters clashed with riot police who fired rubber bullets amid reports of businesses being looted.
Fans jump from a bridge on Argentina’s team bus. One falls, taken away on a stretcher, but still singing.
Never seen anything like this! 🇦🇷🏆pic.twitter.com/HsT9DTTvj8
— Adriano Del Monte (@adriandelmonte) December 20, 2022
There was also the grim spectacle of effigies being made of Kylian Mbappe, the France striker: video footage circulating on social media showed one set of fans holding an inflatable dummy bearing Mbappe’s name tag from a rope; another set fire to a pretend coffin lid emblazoned with the forward’s face. Elsewhere, there were reports of racist chanting.
Currently in Buenos Aires, Kylian Mbappe effigy being David Beckham 1998 pic.twitter.com/j2VdL9Es63
— Sports Kris (@sports_kris) December 20, 2022
Argentinians with a lovely 24th birthday present for Kylian Mbappé here. pic.twitter.com/4U5JNOQWHK
— Get French Football News (@GFFN) December 20, 2022
On the bus itself, Emiliano Martinez — one of the star performers from Sunday’s breathless final — mocked the striker, who had irritated Argentinians with his pre-tournament claims that South American football was not as strong as the European game, by cradling a baby-sized dummy with the Frenchman’s face on it.
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These incidents had a sinister edge and followed disturbing incidents of fans singing racist and homophobic chants aimed at the French squad, and Mbappe in particular, in Qatar.
In general, however, the mood in Buenos Aires was euphoric, rather than spiteful. On the way to the Obelisk, the city’s emblematic monument that stands 67 metres high on Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest avenue in the world, as the Argentinians say, the party was at its purest.
“Messi is everything to me, everything!” shouted a 20-year-old woman.
“I tattoo everything of Messi, everything!” shouted one of her friends.
Football was everywhere and everything. In a local grocery store, names are discarded; instead, everyone becomes ‘Champion’ and all the chat revolves around the national team, Lionel Scaloni, his tactics against France or what sets Messi apart in the comparison with Diego Maradona.
“How are you, Champion?”
“This is great, brother! And the most beautiful thing is that this was a team, Scaloni put together a team!”
“And look, I love Diego, but this is something else, this team is an example for the younger players, Champion.”
“No mess ever and always with the same woman…”
“Messi and this team are good for the country, Champion.”
“See you, enjoy, champions!”
It was like this everywhere, the streets choked with fans chewing on delicious-smelling choripan (chorizo sandwiches), quaffing beer and fernet and coke.
They had turned out to sing and jump, to embrace any stranger knowing that they had something glorious in common. Most of them already know that they will not see the players or the trophy, because the team bus travelled just 17 kilometres in five hours. The party will close with the champions waving to the crowd from two helicopters.
Then Muchachos, the song written by Fernando Romero, a 30-year-old primary school teacher, is being bellowed from every corner. If “Brasil, decime qué se siente” (“Brazil, tell me what it feels like”) was the soundtrack to Brazil 2014, a marvellous song with a catchy rhythm and at times absurd lyrics, for Qatar 2022 fans adopted this — an anthem that combines the heroes of the Falklands War with Maradona and his parents cheering on Messi from the sky.
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Muchachos is playing all the time and everywhere, its chorus (which stretches the word “Muchaaaaaaaachossssss…!” in a glorious, guttural roar) providing a moment of catharsis for a people who have become wearily accustomed to bad news in the shape of economic and political crises.
They are happy to be happy, in a kind of self-sustaining loop, even more so for the wedge of the population — more than half — who were not even born when Maradona lifted the trophy in Mexico in 1986.
The satisfaction of something well done, of a national team that can triumph, thrill, shine and produce epic deeds without following the Maradona model, lifts football, and in reality the whole of Argentina, into a new era. The need to see Messi through the prism of Maradona is over. No one wants Leo to be Diego anymore; now everyone is simply delighted that Messi is Messi. And that, in a country that loves grandiloquence, affectionate and passionate to unusual extremes, is saying a lot.
Maradona was the owner of a flowery and witty vocabulary, of sharp and rounded phrases that any publicist, marketing expert or political campaign manager would admire. He was also a disruptor and champion of the underdog, who loved Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez while pouring scorn on the United States and FIFA.
Not Messi. Messi is a man of few words and generally flat sentences, unless he gets angry with a Dutch footballer and calls him a “bobo” (dummy) in a TV interview. He, moreover, will never give an opinion on how the world or the Catholic Church should be governed. So different from Maradona.
And the question almost inevitably arises: what would Maradona have said about Tuesday’s party? This image gives you an idea: it was an organic, spontaneous celebration, organised on a whim, as if a teenager had thrown an impromptu house party in the absence of their parents. Except this house was a city, and the guest list stretched to four million.
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There was one notable absentee — President Alberto Fernandez, making him the first head of state or government in history not to be seen with his national team after a World Cup title. This, after all, was a day for the people, not the politicians.
While everyone was still jumping up and down in Buenos Aires and across the country, Messi returned to his home city of Rosario, a place even more football mad than Buenos Aires. He will spend the next few days enjoying the barbecue and swimming, thinking about the future and whether he will stay good to his word and keep playing for the national team as a world champion.
Perhaps he will ponder the possibility of returning to Rosario to play for at least a few months in the shirt of Newell’s Old Boys, the club of his childhood. One day, surely, he will play for Inter Miami, a good excuse to settle in a city he and his wife, Antonela, love.
And one day they will both realise that the 2026 World Cup is just a few months away, and that neither he, nor the United States, nor FIFA will want to miss out on the opportunity and the business of adding, at 39 years of age, another chapter to his legend.
(Top photo: Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images)