Lionel Messi’s visit has Kolkata in a frenzy

By Jaydip Sengupta

Pages Editor

It is quite fitting that Lionel Messi, revered in India’s eastern metropolis of Kolkata as the ‘God of Football’, is making his first stop on the GOAT India Tour in the City of Joy. And if the scenes unfolding two days before his arrival are anything to go by — the unmissable life-sized cutouts, banners and posters adorning various corners and a buzz gradually building to a crescendo — the city is likely to come to a standstill for the few hours that the Argentine football genius will spend attending various programmes before heading to other cities in India.

The craze surrounding his second visit to Kolkata — his first was in 2011 when Argentina played an international friendly against Venezuela — is quite understandable in this football-mad part of India. This is the same city that welcomed two other GOATs of their era, Pele and Diego Maradona.

The Brazil legend dazzled Kolkata back in 1977, when he played an exhibition match with New York Cosmos. Maradona visited the city twice, in 2008 and 2017, and had expressed surprise at the love for football in this part of the world.

Legendary German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn played his last match for Bayern Munich in this city in 2008, where a full-house cheered him on at Salt Lake Stadium — venue for the Messi show and featuring concerts and a celebrity match involving the city’s own sporting icons, cricketer Sourav Ganguly, footballer Bhaichung Bhutia, and tennis star Leander Paes.

More recently, Argentine goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez received a raucous welcome when he toured the city in July 2023 after winning the 2022 Fifa World Cup. And just last month, Germany’s World Cup-winning captain Lothar Matthaus visited Kolkata and encountered the kind of frenzy that would rival any European football capital.

Debojyoti Dhar, a freelance photographer residing in the city, bought a ticket worth Rs11,800 (a little under Dh500) just to get a glimpse of the person he, like millions of others in the city, call ‘God of Football’. “We are all crazy about him,” he said. “Having followed Messi’s exploits for nearly two decades and now getting one of the best seats in the house to watch him is a dream-come-true for me.”

Messi will land in Kolkata at 1:30am in the early hours of Saturday after a brief stopover in Dubai from Miami, having just been voted Major League Soccer’s Most Valuable Player for the second year in-a-row. Later in the morning, he will attend a sponsor-exclusive meet-and-greet featuring an Argentine-Indian fusion food festival.

Due to security concerns, Messi will virtually unveil his “biggest ever statue” — a 70-foot structure — from his hotel. He was initially scheduled to inaugurate it in person, but Kolkata police did not grant permission for the on-site event.

A crowd of more than 70,000 is expected for the stadium event. “Seventy five thousand seats are open for spectators. There is heavy demand and we have opened counter sales from Tuesday,” Satadru Dutta, the promoter of the event, said.

With Messi’s Inter Miami teammates, Rodrigo de Paul and Luiz Suarez, also expected to accompany him on his India visit that will feature programmes in Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi and with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, along with fellow stars and football buffs John Abraham and Tiger Shroff joining in the festivities, the GOAT tour will be a perfect celebration of one of the greatest of all time.