When Lionel Messi scores a hat-trick, the world celebrates. Statistics are updated, records are shattered, and commentators exhaust their superlatives to describe a man who has long since transcended the boundaries of sport. However, as I awoke at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday to watch Argentina face Algeria, Messi's latest achievement stirred something more intimate than admiration. It reopened a memory, a wound, and oddly, an affection that has survived disappointment.
A City's Anticipation
I recall December 13 vividly. The anticipation had built over months, akin to waiting for Durga Puja. The entire city of Kolkata rearranged its life around the possibility of seeing Lionel Messi. Fans flew in from neighboring states, others boarded overnight trains from distant districts. College students sacrificed luxuries and saved money for months, with some purchasing tickets in installments. I was among them, waiting for what seemed impossible until it suddenly wasn't.
After years of waking up in the dead of night to watch him on television, after years of defending Argentina in countless football debates, after tears in 2014 and euphoria in 2022, I would finally see Lionel Messi. Not on a screen, not through grainy highlights, but in flesh and blood. Or so I believed.
The Cruelest Disappointment
What unfolded instead was perhaps the cruelest form of disappointment—not absence, but proximity. He was there, yet he wasn't. The GOAT was in the city, and thousands like me who had waited for him could not even catch a glimpse. I saw everyone trying to get closer until no one could truly see him. Messi was only meters away, but he might as well have been on another continent.
There is a peculiar sadness in being denied something within reach. It is easier to mourn what never came than to process what arrived but remained unseen. That is why the memory lingers. What hurt was that a city, and a Messi fan, that had given him so much love for so many years deserved a moment—just a moment. A wave, a smile, a memory to share with friends and family. Instead, what remains is a sentence I have heard from countless others and one I, too, carry: 'I was there. But I couldn't see him.'
Love Survives Disappointment
Yet, love has a strange way of surviving disappointment. Even after all that, when Messi scores, Kolkata rises, as it did at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Will I forget that the GOAT was once so near, yet remained so far? Not really, not after that landmark disappointment. But every Messi goal, every record, and every hat-trick feels personal. It reminds me why I waited in the first place, why I grew up cutting out Messi's photographs from newspapers and saving them like treasures. It was my fascination with him that first made me want to understand football beyond goals and scorelines. Somewhere along the way, admiration for a boy from Rosario became a love for the game itself.
Perhaps Messi owes Kolkata nothing. But maybe the episode taught me that greatness deserves admiration, but also dignity. When icons visit, they should be celebrated, not consumed. Fans who spend their savings and carry memories for a lifetime deserve better than chaos and disappointment.
A Personal Connection
Messi's records belong to history, immortalized in numbers and milestones, but this hat-trick belongs, in a small and deeply emotional way, to me too—a fan girl who has loved a boy from Rosario long before he set foot here and waited months to see him, only to discover that one could be heartbreakingly close to a dream and still never touch it. Yet, even after December's disappointment, I woke up before dawn on June 17, proving that love outlives distance, heartbreak, and unfulfilled promises. I never stopped loving the GOAT, and that is because love has an uncanny ability to survive even the worst of memories.
