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Rosario is Argentina’s third-largest city, with a population of 1.5 million. It is steeped in history, the birthplace of Argentina’s blue-and-white flag, and the most important industrial city and port on the Paraná River in the heart of the Pampas.

But none of that is why I came.

I came for just two words.

Messi.

I arrived in Rosario on an early-spring morning. The breeze still carried a bit of chill, and pink flowers were blooming along the streets. In Buenos Aires, the streets are lined with jacarandas, which at first glance gave me a familiar feeling of Kunming.

I wanted to exchange some pesos first. As I walked, something started to feel off. It wasn’t until I reached the city’s empty main streets that it hit me: where was everyone?! The streets were practically Silent Hill, and every shop was shuttered. Rosario actually has many elegant

Finally, in the distance, a procession appeared carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary. Ah—so it was Sunday. In South America, a day off is a real day off. People truly know how not to shortchange themselves.

My only hope was the industrious Chinese community. At a Chinese supermarket, I asked the owner about exchanging money. He politely asked me to wait outside, pulled down the metal gate, went to the back office to count out the cash, then let me back in, pulled down the gate again, and watched as I counted it and stuffed it into my waist pouch. Next door, the Chinese restaurant had its metal shutter pulled down like a bunker. Ordering and picking up food could only be done through a tiny ventilation opening. The whole sequence of mysterious operations left me a little stunned.

A tiny taste of home, earned at the risk of my “life.”

A few days earlier, I had wondered why I didn’t have any camera photos from Rosario. Writing this now, I suddenly realized why: during those two days, I simply didn’t dare take my camera out.

That siege-like sense of danger was my first impression of Rosario. By the numbers, this is Argentina’s worst city for violent crime.

About half an hour south of downtown by bus is a neighborhood called La Bajada. In Spanish, the name roughly means “the lower part,” though not in the Manhattan “downtown” sense. It is closer to the sort of city layout summed up by “east rich, west noble, south poor, north lowly”—a working-class area where lower-income laborers are concentrated.

If you’ve come here on pilgrimage too, the moment you get off the bus, you won’t doubt that you’re in the right place. The local residents have long made no effort to hide their pride in the neighborhood.

Some have dressed their front doors directly in Argentina’s blue-and-white No. 10 jersey.

Others have made their windows part of the silent competition.

Not a single utility pole, wall, or even stretch of curb has been spared.

Argentina has no shortage of talented players, nor of gifted street artists. Every corner here has long been covered by exuberant creations, and every mural is shouting the same name with all its might.

“He comes from another galaxy, and also from my neighborhood”—a line that is both wonderfully humble and proud to the extreme.

The local government has even created a Messi Route, linking together moments from Messi’s childhood into a sightseeing trail. A pilgrimage route for Messi fans.

Turning into a side alley, I immediately spotted Messi’s childhood home. The two-story house stood out among the surrounding one-story homes. Clearly, Messi’s father Jorge—who had worked as a manager at a steel company—was able to provide his family with a somewhat more respectable standard of living than their neighbors.

Perhaps many years ago, his childhood friend Lucas came to the door just like this, shouting, “Come down, let’s play soccer.”

The house was repainted a couple of years ago. After the World Cup the year before last, someone added another mural on the side wall, as if Messi himself had once sat on that balcony gazing up at the stars of the Southern Hemisphere.

This street has barely changed over the years, and most of the old neighbors never moved away. As I paced back and forth, the man across the street came out to wash his car, so I hurried over and struck up a conversation in my shaky Spanish.

The man launched into an endless stream of stories about Messi. For example, Messi would sometimes come over to his house as a child to play and hang out. At 13, he went to Barcelona with his father, but his mother and sister continued living here. What shocked me most was that he casually referred to the “honorable Mr. Messi” as Leo. So I asked if I could shake his hand—after all, this was a hand that had once patted the head of a cub-version Messi.

It’s incredible to think that the people living on this street once watched a future superstar running around here. The man said Leo often practiced shooting against this wall. One explosive kick after another forged a king of soccer.

For a long time before the Qatar World Cup, there were still stubborn Argentines who felt that Messi, coming from a middle-class background, could not fully represent Argentine soccer. They preferred Maradona, who grew up with wild energy in the slums of La Boca.

That kiss in 2022 shattered even the last trace of doubt.

From then on, three stars shone at once on the streets of La Bajada.

At the end of the lane, this patch of weedy ground was Messi’s first soccer field. Every afternoon, his grandmother Celia would sit by the side and watch her grandson dribble, beat defenders, and shoot.

On the wall of an apartment building beside the field—or vegetable patch—there is a mural four stories high. Compared with the other graffiti, this one is special: a few years ago, when Messi returned home on vacation, he posed for a photo with it.

So this is effectively a mural personally blessed by Messi. If you love to play soccer, come pay your respects here—I wonder if it might work especially well.

In front of the mural, I met a couple from the United States. Their daughter is in the youth academy of a women’s soccer club in the capital, and they had made a special trip to visit her—while also taking the opportunity to come to Rosario and walk the Messi Route.

The elementary school across the street from the mural is Rosario’s Elementary School No. 66 (La Escuela N° 66 General Las Heras). Its original name honored a general from Argentina’s War of Independence, but you can’t find it on the map anymore, because it has long since been changed to

what local children call it: Escuela Primaria de Messi, Messi Elementary School!

Messi attended this elementary school, just a few hundred meters from home, all the way through sixth grade. The school still looks much the same as when he left. Peeking through a classroom window, it was easy to imagine little Messi doing the same—arriving with a big backpack, sitting properly through class, and waiting for recess so he could dash out to play soccer on the playground.

Close to lunchtime, at the end of the last class of the morning, the children were packing their schoolbags and getting ready to go home. Maybe the sudden appearance of an Asian face outside the window made them curious, because a few kids immediately turned their attention to me, chattering away. I greeted them: "yo soy de China, me gusta Messi, mucho!" (I’m from China, and I like Messi very, very much).

The entire class instantly threw their arms up and cheered, and the whole classroom turned into a soccer stadium. So I shouted the same line through every classroom window, and the cheers spread down the building like a relay. The teachers could only smile at me helplessly—I had become the troublemaker disrupting school order.

At the school entrance, a few parents stood around waiting to pick up their children, no different from school dismissal back home in China. Messi was very close to his grandmother, and I wondered whether she used to wait here every day as well, ready to bring her grandson home for lunch.

Sitting under the shade of a tree, I chatted with an elderly man who was waiting for his granddaughter and listened as he talked about how the neighborhood had changed over the years. Following his directions, I went to the corner to buy my favorite empanada (an Argentine baked stuffed pastry?). I don’t know whether Messi ate them back then, but I do know that as a child he had a particular fondness for another Argentine national treasure of a dessert. Alfajores are thick sandwich cookies—extremely sweet and rich—but they pair perfectly with the bitterness of mate tea.

Back in the city center, things were only just starting to get lively, and even Milei was being dragged out for public “execution.”

Contrary to what a first impression might suggest, the countries of South America actually gained independence as early as the beginning of the 19th century. Unlike colonies in Asia and Europe, this kind of independence was more like a branch office that had been running for a century deciding to spin off on its own—no longer sending profits back to headquarters—while still remaining European at its core.

Starting in the 18th century, a steady stream of immigrants from Spain and Italy settled in Rosario, which is why the old city has so many Baroque and Rococo-style buildings. Walking through town, you can almost feel as if you are somewhere in Europe.

One descendant of Italians gave the world one of the greatest players in soccer history. Another family from Spain, even earlier, also produced a son.

Messi still returns to Rosario every year for vacation, but the city’s other hero left his hometown forever. The bus back into town happened to stop at the corner of Entre Ríos, and Che Guevara was born in a bedroom on the second floor of the apartment building across the street.

Perhaps because Che had long since devoted himself to the whole of the American continent, Rosario has not made a grand display of commemorating this wandering son. Even his former residence, the only one there is, remains a private home to this day. Only a plaque explains that an idealistic fighter once spent his childhood here.

Of course, locals still eagerly tell Che’s story, just as they tell Messi’s story.

Before leaving Rosario, I came to the banks of the Paraná River. Even more eye-catching than the National Flag Memorial is the 69-meter-tall Messi mural.

The name of the mural echoes the phrase locals keep repeating: “De otra galaxia y De mi barrio.”

As I write these recollections, the king of football is once again leading the Pampas Eagles into the Copa América. Good luck!

About the Author

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