Football Writers' Week: Guillem Balague on Writing Lionel Messi's Biography

It's Football Writers' Week at Bleacher Report, and to wrap things up, we turned to B/R's very own Guillem Balague, a man with more strings to his bow than we care to mention. We asked Guillem to tell us about the wondrous experience of writing Lionel Messi's authorised biography.

Day 1—Duncan Castles on the dark arts of the transfer window

Day 2—Kristian Sturt on the secrets of freelance success

Day 3—Ollie Holt on the joys of interviewing Thierry Henry

Day 4—Jonathan Wilson on how tactics went mainstream

For as long as I can remember, apart from family and friends, the only two things that have been ever-present in my life were football and writing.

Everything else, as Ben Elton has often said, has been garnish on the plate that life has served up to me.

My mother is fond of telling people—and frequently does—that from the age of eight when I was asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I always replied "a journalist." Nothing has changed to sway me from that. All these years later, it’s still all I want to do—basically storytelling, in the shape of articles, documentaries, TV shows, books or songs.

B/R

The wonderful former Chelsea and Scotland footballer Pat Nevin once famously said, "Being a footballer is what I do. It’s not what I am."

I’m not sure I could say that about soccer journalism. I think what Pat was actually saying is that he could live without football. I guess I could too. But I could not stop telling stories. Of moments, of journeys. Of people.

I have said it many times before, but it’s worth repeating. I’m a lucky, lucky man.

The success of my biography on Pep Guardiola, Another Way of Winning, I think it’s fair to say came as something of a surprise to my publishers, Orion. "Right then, what’s next?" they asked as we sat around the table in October 2012.

There was only ever going to be one "next" for me: the greatest player ever to lace on a pair of boots, the little big man, Leo Messi.

Manu Fernandez/Associated Press

I had met Leo on a number of occasions. What I did have was a fascinating insight into not just the player, but also the boy, gleaned from work done with Pep on my previous book, and no one, apart from his family and close friends, knew Leo better than the former Barcelona manager.

What I demanded was the right to tell the whole story, and to those ends, what I needed, and eventually got, was unlimited access to all of those around him.

My aim was to recount the tale of not just a footballing genius, but also of a little boy taken away from his home and his friends who battled adversity, to go on to become the greatest footballer in the world and in the process, come perilously close to tearing apart the thing he loved most in the world—his family.

I also wanted to make sure that the book was not one of your standard "He hit the ball and there it was in the back of the net" type of sagas

To that end I spent a great deal of time researching at length, with, among others, the marvellous Matthew Syed, the psychology of football and the perennial debate between natural talent and total dedication before coming to the conclusion that like Laurel and Hardy, flip and flop and Ant and Dec, in the words of the Frank Sinatra song "Love and Marriage," "You can’t have one without the other." 

There was so much in the story of Leo Messi that needed telling, not least his battle to fund necessary growth-hormone treatment, his fight to get permission from the Spanish authorities to play for Barcelona and the struggle of his family to settle in a foreign country, to name but three.

Coupled with that there were an assortment of myths and legends that surrounded the player, most of them apocryphal or downright false. I remember when I first came to Liverpool and started to try to ply my trade as a journalist, it seemed that every person I ever spoke to had been a great friend, or had intimate knowledge, of John Lennon. Likewise with Leo Messi. Separating fact from fantasy was one of the most difficult aspects of the whole operation.

I will always be indebted to so many people who helped in the making of the book, not least to Pep, whose analysis of the Messi years was invaluable, but most of all to the members of Leo’s family who, once they gave the go-ahead, were never anything other that fully supportive.

There were many aspects of the Messi family story that must still feel very raw. His younger sister’s inability to settle in Catalonia, his family's dependence on the earning potential of a boy just 16, the virtual breakup of his family because of his decision to stay in Spain and the changing relationship between Leo and his father as he juggled a life that fluctuated between father and manager.

Before agreeing to the project, the Messi family asked for editorial control. Despite the sensitive nature of much of what I wrote, they did not change a syllable, and for that, my gratitude knows no bounds for no other reason that it shows that they believe I told it as it was.

What next? I’m saying nothing other than that I’ve recently returned from Madeira.

What an interesting place that is!

Guillem Balague's book 'Messi' is published on Orion and available in hardback from all good retailers. A paperback version is imminent.