Messi and us
I don’t know if there are any polls to confirm this, but I believe that a large number of people who watched the soccer World Cup (among them myself) wanted to see Lionel Messi crowned world champion. And I wonder why we care about a soccer player from a foreign country whose achievements have no relation with our own lives.
Is it because we had been seeking “justice” for the top player of our era (or perhaps any era), with his winning the one trophy that had eluded him? Did we want to share in his glory by bearing witness to it? Perhaps we care because we know that despite his legendary achievements in Europe, Messi has not won the love of his compatriots? Then again, if we are not Argentinean, why is it our business if a multimillionaire soccer player seeks greater glory? What makes this particular person so familiar that we care about his fate?
Perhaps the answer lies in the familiarity that we feel with people whom we see on our screens, whose stories we follow, with all their ups and downs. This sense of closeness is seductive and an illusion – somehow, we feel that the protagonist cares about us, too. We see what we wish to see (if there is some basis for this in reality, of course). In our image of Messi, we see a serious man who enchants us with his art and persistence, with his strategic thinking, with the problem in his physical growth that he had to overcome, with his laboring under the shadow of Diego Maradona.
These “contact points” would not be so strong if Messi did not combine such a familiar face with his otherworldly talent, if he were only a superathlete, like his main rival Ronaldo. We want our idols to be like us but also much more superior, so that their victories can lift us, too. This personal need becomes the supernatural, mass influence that the “hero,” the leader, or the religious figure enjoys as they personify our personal and collective desires. And so, we want a happy end to Messi’s tale. We want dreams. So that we can ignore FIFA and all the other merchants of the power of dreams.
