“When the year starts the objective is to win it all with the team, to win all the competitions.”
Lionel Messi
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I have fun like a child in the street. When this stops happening, it will be time to leave football.
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About this quote
Meaning
Messi is connecting the joy he felt as a child playing football in the street to the way he still experiences the game as a professional. The moment that pure, uncomplicated enjoyment disappears is the moment the game will have nothing left to offer him. It is a simple but telling measure of when to walk away.
Context
This kind of reflection is particularly meaningful coming from a player who has spent his entire adult life inside one of the most pressurized environments in world sport. Professional football at the highest level involves intense scrutiny, relentless competition, and enormous commercial weight. Against all of that, Messi is anchoring his motivation in something playful and personal rather than external. The image of a child in the street strips away everything formal and gets to the emotional core of why anyone picks up a ball in the first place.
About the author
Lionel Messi was born in 1987 in Rosario, Argentina, where he played football from a very young age before moving to Spain to join the FC Barcelona academy. He went on to become one of the most celebrated footballers in the history of the game, winning major honors at club level and with the Argentine national team, including the FIFA World Cup in 2022. Despite years at the summit of the sport, he has consistently described his relationship with the game in simple, genuine terms.
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