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Sometimes, mostly when his oldest son sent him another Leo Messi brilliance compilation alongside 20 laughing emojis, Leo thinks about what the world would think of him if they knew how much he had been holding himself back on a regular basis.
If they knew how much more he could do.
Antonela knew.
(She knew everything about him.)
Thiago knew.
(Hence the countless compilations in his inbox.)
And sometimes he thought one of his teammates had figured it out.
(Mostly when he forgot himself during training a bit.)
He had learned early on that nobody else could do with the ball what he could do. Nobody could read the game like him.
He knew the second his foot touched the ball, where the ball would end up, he saw the angle he needed to curl it perfectly under the crossbar during a free kick. And he had also learned that if he didn't tone it down by quite a bit, it was highly unfair to both his opponents and teammates.
It had started very early – during La Massia days when he could barely speak a word to anyone – that if he gave absolutely 100% nobody could follow him and therefore playing like that was no fun.
At first he had to remind himself every time he stepped into the pitch to keep a calm head and maybe not show up everyone.
By the time he made it onto the first team and was suddenly playing alongside Ronaldinho and other legends, the need to hold back had already ingrained itself into his very being.
Sure sometimes he slipped up, and only realised when he had dribbled past all the defenders and the goal keeper and had put the ball into the back of the net, but most of the time there was this little voice in the back of his head – sounding an awful lot like a teenaged Geri Piqué – reminding him that nobody likes a selfish player.
So he made sure to use his dribbles and his ability to pass the ball through literal lines of defenders to put it exactly at the feet of his teammates, where they could score.
He made sure to always, always thank the person who assisted him first, before he sent his little prayer up to bis nonna Celia.
There were moments in his career where the need to say fuck it, and just go for it we're so strong that the war he was fighting in his head were actually making the things on the pitch worse.
He missed penalties, free kicks – the most important ones ironically – and it was moments like this where he asked himself if this was truly worth it.
If hiding his true skills, only using them in his own backyard where nobody could see him, was actually the way to go.
But by now holding back had become muscle memory, to a point where it felt like he literally couldn't do it in front of an audience.
“They've got your skills.” Antonela stretched out on the deck chair beside him, holding the mate gourd they were sharing. Leo looked over to where they were playing against each other.
“All of them?”
Antonela laughed softly. “You haven't seen them in their games lately, Matteo scored a free kick yesterday from almost 15 metres away, it looked like a carbon copy of yours. Perfectly curled into the top left corner. Thiago could have scored like 5 goals, but stopped at three to give assists to his teammates. And Ciro spent the whole game standing in the centre circle scanning the game until he got the ball and dribbled past like seven players and nutmegged the keeper. Leo, they're becoming you and people are starting to realise that.”
“Damn, I noticed when we last played here, but I guess if the only reference is… me, it's not as noticeable. They still don't know all my tricks.”
He winked before getting up and stealing the ball right from Matteo's feet, where he had been kicking it back and forth with Thiago, making Ciro chase after them.
“Hey papa, that's not fair!”
He tried to get the ball back, tackling Leo, but he just chipped the ball over Matteo's legs towards Ciro, who then flawlessly dribbled past Thiago to put the ball into their little goal.
“Why is it not fair? You were doing the same to Ciro earlier.”
“Mpfff.”
“Or you could have done it during your game yesterday.”
“But there it's boring. They all just look at you like this”, he made a shocked Pikachu face, “here at least I know Ciro and Thiago and you will fight back.”
“I know… I know. I've always felt the same way… Pi- Uncle Geri told me back when we were kids that I am always hoarding the ball… There were maybe ten games where I didn't hold back at all.”
For a moment Matteo looked stunned, while Leo used the few seconds to intercept a pass between his other two boys, stealing the ball once again, kicking it up into the air a few times, before lightly tapping it with his heel towards the goal. He didn't need to look to know it landed exactly where he intended it to.
“Wait a second!” The shock on Matteo's face got replaced by his signature sly grin that meant he was up to no good. “Does that mean you could have won the world cup waay earlier, but you fucked it up?!”
“Watch your language, young man!”
“yeah, yeah… but papa… what if we just … don't hold back anymore?”
“It's not that easy…”
“Why? This year is the world cup again and you could easily win it again. Or are you saying you're getting old?”
“You little shit!” Leo had to laugh as he chased after Matteo, who tried to hide himself behind Antonela’s deck chair.
But somehow this idea would not let him go anymore.
He was turning 40 in a year, this world cup would definitely be his last and why not go out with a bang and show the world what
they have been truly missing all this time?