LaLiga's glimpse of a wider world after Messi
Lionel Messi arriving at the team's hotel after being defeated in the UEFA Champions League quarter-final by Bayern Munich at the Luz stadium in Lisbon
Nine months ago, LaLigaTV launched in a different world. Journalists from across the UK and Ireland were jetted to Barcelona on unessential travel. They crowded around tables in packed restaurants, scoffing substantial meals of tapas without any statutory obligation. Strangers greeted one another with kisses on both cheeks. And Messi’s picture was everywhere.
What will this whole operation do when he’s gone, LaLigaTV pundit Guillem Balague was asked, at one point.
“Ssshhh, we won’t get into that yet,” he answered. “We’ve still got plenty of years to come and nobody is talking about that, but it’s going to be a void in everybody’s life — whoever loves football, not just Spanish football.”
Last Thursday, the LaLigaTV launch for the 2020-21 season took place on Zoom. And Messi’s picture was nowhere to be seen.
The morning went by in a curious vacuum, the axis on which this world revolves unstable. During the initial presentations, it took 44 minutes for the elephant in the room to trumpet.
And even then the M word just kind of slipped out, as somebody tipped Karim Benzema to be top scorer. “Unless, of course, Messi stays.”
A side note on journalistic procedural: These conversations were ‘embargoed’ until Monday anyway, so there was little point teasing out the will-he-won’t-he. The story was moving too fast and Balague, for one, was sure there “would be another twist”.
So instead they talked of Sevilla’s good transfer business, the rise of Granada, how it might just be Atletico’s year, but you’d like to see more from Betis, about David Silva’s swansong and that Unai Emery's rep is unblemished locally by events in North London.
LaLigaTV has done much adjusting in its short life. Last December, there was excitement about virtual interviews, beaming players into studio post-match via high-tech holograms. The station has since become one of the first broadcasters to paint in a virtual crowd, to go with the piped-in atmosphere.
But how could it magic up a replacement Messi?
In Amazon’s behind the scenes documentary ‘ ’, Jose Mourinho meets Harry Kane for the first time and sells him the dream.
“The world looks to English football with an incredible respect but they still think that the movie stars of football belong to other places. We have to build also your status in that direction.”
“That’s my aim,” says Harry. “I want to be Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.”
Now it seemed LaLiga would no longer be the movie set. And this time Balague was ready to get into it, what life will look like in the void.
“You go back to when Leo Messi was 17, there was a decaying Ronaldinho. But the big names were the clubs. And then something that never happened in the history of the game, two of the best players in the world were fighting against each other.
“So we’re going back to the normal world, I think, eventually, when Messi retires. And one thing I've always found about LaLiga, people get really excited about what’s coming up.
“I feel the same about Ansu Fati and Martin Odegaard. And I think Joao Felix could be a top three player if he gets the consistency. Life goes on. We should go on with it.”
LaLigaTV presenter Semra Hunter insists the focus of a channel that shows every game live has never been narrow.
“There was football life before Messi, there will be football life after Messi. In Spanish football, there has always been the movie stars, to use that term, the big names, and there will continue to be so.
“LaLiga is not necessarily about one, two, five names. It’s about the clubs. And there's a lot of exciting storylines at every single club.
“It's a wonderful league and there’s wonderful talent coming through and veterans who are legends of the game, and big clubs who are historic giants.”
Was it healthy anyway, for a league to serve as chorus line for a pair of high wattage leading men?
“Quite clearly, football is a mirror of society,” Balague continues. “We used to look at the game like this (gestures a wide focus) but we just narrowed it down. Especially in the Anglo-Saxon world where even on television when you look at a game, it’s all close-ups. It’s all sweat.
“And I feel it’s one of the biggest differences in how LaLiga is analysed. You see the pitch, you see the bigger picture. You analyse the clubs and less the individuals.
“It's almost inevitable that society has taken us to the individual, but it is a collective game. The Ballon d’Or has never been more famous or created such debate. But at the same time you can take the focus a little bit off the individual and see the game, see the bigger picture.”
The point is made that at clubs like Liverpool, and Bayern Munich, it is now more about an ensemble cast, about equal screen time. With PSG a glaring exception.
“I get the impression that everyone is adapting to the new times. You look around and think it’s impossible to compete against the club state. If that infinite amount of resources are put on the table, obviously the whole industry will be happy, because there’s more money, but it forces a change of policy for Barcelona, Madrid, even Atletico.
“But they have already started an adaptation process which means being more clever with resources, having an infrastructure where you can get your players from the lower ranks.”
Champions Madrid have a stockpile of young talent like Odegard, Federic Valverde, Vinicius Jr, Rodrygo Goes, Brahim Diaz.
Even Barca, for all the angst, have Fati, Riqui Puig and Frenkie de Jong to fashion the kind of ‘project’ Messi craved.
“For a while, Barca have been winning, and having a player (Messi) that makes that easier means they haven't looked at themselves and where they are in the world.
“Now they are forced to do so. Barca are in the process. And look at the team now and they have started the transition, though some would say a little bit late.
“In the last decade we have been treated well with all these superstars. Now it is time to look at it in a different way.”
Next day, came the twist in the story which means, instead, that LaLigaTV will have it all for one more year at least.
The leading man and now a soap opera too. A hostage situation, a psychodrama where every gesture the trapped superhero makes will be analysed to death around the world.
But when the final credits eventually roll, they can now at least begin to picture how a sequel might look.
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