Lionel Messi and his partner, Antonella Roccuzzo, have a dreamy love story. The two were childhood friends and later became husband and wife.
Recently, the newspaper La Capital “unearthed” a photo of a 10-year-old Lionel Messi with Antonella Roccuzzo on a beach in Argentina in 1998. At that time, the two were on vacation at the resort in Punta Mogotes.
Antonella Roccuzzo is the same age as Messi and has been a childhood friend of the Argentine. Messi was playing in a nearby youth football tournament at the time. He was teammates with Lucas Scaglia, Antonella’s cousin.
Messi and Antonella in a photo taken in 1998
Also in the photo above are Lucas Scaglia and other children, including Messi’s teammate Matias Pecce.
Taking advantage of the break from youth football, their parents took their children on holiday to Punta Mogotes. However, Messi’s parents, Jorge and Celia, remained in their hometown of Rosario, an eight-hour drive away.
Argentina’s La Capital newspaper said it took them three years to find the photo, as its reporters searched for a picture of Messi in Mar del Plata, a popular resort that most Argentines visited as children.
Messi’s small family
Punta Mogotes is a 20-minute drive from Mar del Plata. It is a popular holiday destination in January, at the height of Argentina’s heatwave. Messi visited in January 1998 to play for the junior team of Newell’s Old Boys, a famous Rosario club. His team won El Mundialito, a tournament that included teams from clubs such as Boca Juniors, River Plate and Velez Sarsfield.
An arm injury prevented Messi from playing in the tournament the following year and he sat out and watched his team exit in the Semi-finals.
Bruno Verdenelli, a journalist for La Capital , revealed that Messi’s former teammate Matias Pecce sent the photo when they were trying to find photos of Messi in Mar del Plata. Verdenelli revealed on Twitter how he discovered the photo after a conversation with Pecce and an acquaintance named Francisco Luduena. It turns out that Messi was staying in Matias Pecce’s house while he was away playing for Newell’s Old Boys.
“They told me everything. I couldn’t believe that I had finally discovered the whole story. I needed a photo but Francisco couldn’t find anything about Messi. I was really impatient. Then Mattias remembered the photo from the beach and sent it to me. It had a small reward. Next to Messi in the photo was Antonella,” Verdenelli said.
Messi later married Antonella in June 2017. They have three children together: Thiago (6 years old), Mateo (3 years old) and Ciro (1 year old). This is the wonderful ending of the love story between Messi and Antonella.
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