The Messiah

There is something tail-swishingly devilish about the way Lionel Messi runs with a football.

Lionel Messi. Image: José Manuel Vidal. (Google CC).

The English commentator can’t contain himself. “He is just brilliant. Georgie Best, Diego Maradona, Johan Cruyff … Incredible little man. He is the best player on the planet.”  Lionel Messi, who will be at the center of Diego Maradona’s plans for Argentina’s World Cup plans in South Africa 2010, scored recently for Barcelona against Real Zaragoza, and left the commentator looking for comparisons.

For those who only think of Messi as a dribbler, in this clip from that game he does that and more: he is strong on the ball, dispossesses an opposing player in midfielder, then starts a move, taking on two more players, that ends in a spectacular goal.

The El Pais journalist John Carlin once wrote about Messi: “There is something tail-swishingly devilish about the way Lionel Messi runs with a football; he is as hard to catch as a flea; the speed with which he nips past rival defenders is eye-deceivingly, cartoonishly improbable.”

More Carlin from 2005: “… In person, dressed in regular civilian clothes, off the field, without a ball in sight, Lionel Andrés Messi is not wondrous at all. He is stunningly ordinary. Pale-skinned, thin-lipped and shortish – though the shoulders do show the sinuous evidence of toil at the gym – he turned up for our interview at an anonymous room somewhere in the bowels of the Camp Nou, Barcelona’s giant stadium, dressed in a short-sleeved yellow shirt that he might have borrowed from his dad, blue jeans and white running shoes. No body piercings or tattoos in sight, and a lank head of hair no stylist’s fingers have touched, Messi is the anti-Beckham. He is not a sex symbol; he is a football symbol. On the pitch he is a god; off it, he is one kid more from Rosario, the unglamorous industrial town 200 miles north-west of Buenos Aires where he was born and raised.”

Bring on June.

Further Reading

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.

Biya forever

As Cameroon nears its presidential elections, a disintegrated opposition paves the way for the world’s oldest leader to claim a fresh mandate.

From Cornell to conscience

Hounded out of the United States for his pro-Palestine activism, Momodou Taal insists that the struggle is global, drawing strength from Malcolm X, faith, and solidarity across borders.

After the uprising

Following two years of mass protest, Kenya stands at a crossroads. A new generation of organizers is confronting an old question: how do you turn revolt into lasting change? Sungu Oyoo joins the AIAC podcast to discuss the vision of Kenya’s radical left.

Redrawing liberation

From Gaza to Africa, colonial cartography has turned land into property and people into populations to be managed. True liberation means dismantling this order, not redrawing its lines.

Who deserves the city?

Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.

Djinns in Berlin

At the 13th Berlin Biennale, works from Zambia and beyond summon unseen forces to ask whether solidarity can withstand the gaze of surveillance.