When Antonela is happy, Lionel Messi is happy; just missing the World Cup

In cream pants and a blue hat, Antonela Roccuzzo leaves the Lusail stadium walking alongside her children, accompanied by a friend and a bodyguard.

“¿Qué mirás, boba?”, she asks, looking straight ahead, while being filmed by a cell phone.

The phrase had entered the folklore of the World Cup in Qatar minutes before, said by her husband, Lionel Messi, after Argentina’s victory over the Netherlands on penalties. The “¿Qué mirás, bobo?”, something like “What are you looking at, idiot?” went to rival striker Woghorst after the tense quarter-final match.

Averse to interviews, Antonela, 34, is part of Messi’s career, 35. It is impossible to talk about the career of the seven-time best player in the world and 2022 World Cup finalist without including his wife in the narrative.

It’s a relationship that could affect the performance of the number 10 and captain of the national team on football’s biggest stage.

In Russia, in 2018, employees of the AFA (Argentine Football Association) debated, appalled at Nizhny Novgorod airport, what was happening to Messi. He looked haggard, uninterested, and almost depressed at times.

The team had been defeated the day before by Croatia by 3-0 and was one step away from elimination in the group stage.

The consensus between them, at that moment, was that the star had stopped being himself after having missed a penalty on his debut against Iceland.

An AFA official told the Sheet After that World Cup, the problem was different: Messi was not on good terms with Antonela, and that affected him in a way that the coaching staff did not expect.

Missing the first two games in Russia, she went to St. Petersburg for the decisive clash with Nigeria. Her husband scored one of the most beautiful goals of that tournament, and the team qualified. It would be eliminated in the round of 16, against France.

The striker missed a penalty at the World Cup in Qatar. It was in the second match, against Mexico. He scored a great goal minutes later and has been the best player in the competition ever since.

Accompanied by her sons Thiago, 10, Mateo, 7, and Ciro, 4, Antonela attended all the Argentine games in the Middle East. In the semifinal against Croatia, she was filmed praying, looking at the ground, before the number 10 took the penalty that would open the way for the team to reach the decision against France, this Sunday (18), in Lusail.

They met when Messi was nine years old. She is the cousin of Lucas Scaglia, 35, now retired from football, Lionel’s youth teammate at Newell’s Old Boys, in Rosario, their hometown.

“We had children’s parties at our house. Everyone danced and had fun, except Leo. He was in a corner, standing still, looking at Antonela the whole time”, Scaglia told Sheet in 2017.

According to the former player, the two had more contact when Messi spent a few days on vacation at Scaglia’s family home in Mar del Plata. Antonela was present. It is a legend never confirmed by any of them that the current star wrote letters to the girl saying that one day he would marry her.

They parted ways in 2000, when, aged 13, Messi moved to Barcelona and began the journey to become a professional athlete. Antonela dated another boy from Rosário.

The reunion took place in May 2005, when the girl became depressed over the loss of a close friend in a car accident in Rosario. Messi was in town on vacation and contacted her for moral support. They started dating shortly after. A more long-distance relationship in the early years, but the current wife went to Spain more and more often.

In an interview for Barcelona’s website in 2009, he said for the first time that he had “a bride”. She moved to the city the following year.

Messi and Antonela were married on June 30, 2017, in Rosario, and they could live happily ever after if Argentina are world champions on Sunday, in Lionel’s last World Cup game.