Barcelona’s budget in the 2001-2002 season, Lionel Messi’s first at the club, was 25,660 million pesetas (154 million euros). This campaign, Joan Laporta expects to earn 854 million, although the record was recorded in the year of the levers (sale of assets): 1,259 million. That is, in 22 years Barça has increased its income by 800 million. “Another era, another football,” remembers Antón Parera, general director of the Barça entity, first during the presidency of Josep Maria Núñez and then with Joan Gaspart. “Everything was…” adds Parera, before taking a few seconds to reflect; “more normal”. Normality, in this case, dressed in romanticism and mysticism: Barcelona (supposedly) sealed the signing of the most important player in its history, Leo Messi (672 goals and 35 titles, including four Champions Leagues), in the bar of a club tennis and with a verbal contract. That agreement was recorded on a napkin signed by Carles Rexach, the club’s sports director, and the agents Josep Maria Minguella and Horacio Caggioli. This Friday, the napkin, a treasure kept in different safes, is auctioned at Bonhams in London. The starting price is 350,000 euros.
In 2000, when Argentina was destined for the worst economic crisis in its history (the financial and social situation ended with the corralito of 2001), the Messi family was contemplating moving to Australia. Jorge, head of personnel at a company in Rosario, was looking for a better future for his four children: Rodrigo, Matías, Lionel and Marisol. It was then that Barcelona appeared and a double possibility of growth: for a puny Lionel (he had a hormonal problem and the Catalan club would pay for his treatment) and another for all the Messis. “The day we left Argentina with a baggage of dreams and hopes, but also with many fears, Lionel seemed to enjoy that trip. Surely, only the idea of getting to know, arriving and staying in Barcelona revolved in his head. But I suppose he was also beginning to forge the idea of succeeding in what he wanted most: football,” Jorge wrote after Leo won his fifth Ballon d’Or.
In any case, some setbacks awaited his idea of success. The first, the wait. And that’s where the napkin comes into the picture. “Messi? Rexach remembers; “I signed him in five seconds. It was enough for me to see how he stopped the first ball he touched.” However, after passing the test in September 2000, Barcelona delayed its response to the Messis, who were waiting in Rosario. “We were talking about a little boy who played soccer very well. At that time nobody knew that Messi was going to be Messi. And it was an important bet for the club,” explains Parera. It was then, when to kill the uncertainty, Rexach, who understood that the Argentine pearl could not escape, met with Caggioli and Minguella at the Tennis Pompeia bar. “Charly had probably met there to play tennis with Minguella,” Parera thinks. It was that day, January 14, 2000, when an attempt was made to reassure Jorge Messi.
The way to calm him down? A contract on a napkin: “In Barcelona, on December 14, 2000 and in the presence of Messrs. Minguella and Horacio, Carles Rexach, sports director of FC Barcelona, undertakes under his responsibility and despite any opinion to the contrary, to sign the player Lionel Messi, as long as we stay within the agreed amounts.” Validity of the deal, none; trust, all. At least, that’s what it seemed like. “There were no people who charged commissions, nor so many advertising companies. It was normal at that time,” Parera insists. Caggioli was in charge of guarding the napkin and, with it, the beginning of his mythology. A story that would have died suddenly without the presence of Juan Lacueva, Barcelona executive. “Without Juancito, Messi today would not be Messi. I’m sorry, it’s my opinion,” concludes the club’s former general director.
“The story with the napkin is a very beautiful story, very romantic, but it lasted one day,” explains Marc Lacueva, son of the deceased Juan, today an agent for soccer players. Jorge Messi, incredulous with the pact on the napkin and without a clear resolution to the conflict over his son’s contract, spoke with Barcelona. And there Lacueva appeared. “Leo’s first contract is only signed by my father, as manager of the club. He got a big fight for doing that. They told him that if he believed that this was Espanyol, remembering his past at the other club,” explains Marc. But Lacueva’s involvement did not end there. As Messi needed to undergo hormonal treatment on him and the club continued to be trapped in bureaucracy, Lacueva paid for Lionel’s first vaccinations out of pocket.
“What manager today pays for treatment out of pocket?” asks Parera; “I remember a discussion with Lacueva. “When this boy succeeds, we will be gone and no one will thank us.” The recognition is curious, few talk about Lacueva and everyone talks about a napkin that Jorge Messi never signed. “The only documented owner of that napkin is me,” Caggioli recalled in an interview with Olé Diaryafter Minguella threatened to file a lawsuit that prevented the auction from taking place last March.
“[La servilleta] It should be in the Barça museum, in a preferential place next to Messi’s golden balls, since that little piece of paper is what changed the contemporary history of the club,” Caggioli insisted. “It is true that Horacio offered the napkin to the club,” they say from the club offices. And why isn’t it in the museum? “He asked for money, a variable amount of money compared to museum visitors,” the same sources conclude. The napkin went from the safe deposit boxes of the Caixa de Diagonal to those of the Banco de Andorra. And, since 22 years have passed since that pact, today money does matter.
Messi, for his part, doesn’t want to know anything about the napkin. In fact, Jorge Messi never saw that document signed by Rexach, Caggioli and Minguella. “I never sent the napkin to Rosario, because it didn’t make sense. It was simply an unlock. It served to unblock the situation,” concluded Caggioli. From the past to the present, from Lacueva’s altruism to the dispute between Minguella and Caggioli, from the romanticism of a verbal contract to an auction at the London headquarters of Bonhams.
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