The most popular photo in the history of Instagram with more than 74,362,000 likes on the @leomessi account is also the story of confusion. The World Cup that Lionel Messi showed to Argentinian fans at Qatar’s Lusail Stadium just minutes after becoming world champion on December 18 is not the original FIFA trophy. It was actually a handcrafted replica that a couple of Buenos Aires fans in Argentina had made and brought to Doha as a wish and souvenir of sorts.
Amidst the Albiceleste euphoria after winning the final against France, this apocryphal trophy (trout, in Argentine slang) wandered from the stands onto the pitch and landed in the hands of the Argentina captain, who held it for minutes without knowing it wasn’t the same one , which he had received from FIFA President Gianni Infantino at the awards ceremony some time ago. Alarmed by teammate Ángel Di María, Messi found out about the misunderstanding himself some time later, while still on the pitch, and far from being upset, he thought it was a joke.
Social media users in Argentina, on the other hand, blame the fan couple out of anonymity for corrupting tens and hundreds of thousands of iconic photos – wallpapers on phones and computers, posters in rooms – where they capture Messi and other champions with a fake object of desire.
Two days after the final, Fernando de la Orden, photographer for the Argentine newspapers Clarín and Olé, published on his Instagram account one of the pictures he took in Qatar that seemed more curious than revealing: a laughing dialogue between Di María. with the World Cup in his hands, and Messi. When asked by another photojournalist, Santiago Bluguermann, from Buenos Aires if he had heard this exchange, the Clarín photographer replied: “Di María told Leo that he completed the (mini) round (Olympic) with a glass of trout , he had the real one, that’s why they laughed.” The topic seemed to be over with that, in fact Bluguermann said goodbye (“Great! Thanks! Since Sunday I’ve been trying to find out what they’re laughing about!”), But then Paula Zuzulich entered , an Argentinian fan in Qatar, captioned the scene.”Fernando we own the trout cup and we pass it on to the players on the field. Pretty funny. Thank you,” he wrote.
Zuzulich and the Order met during the World Cup. “In Qatar I took a picture of my daughter and she started following me. I uploaded a photo of Leo and Di María, I told about the Trout Cup and the girl’s mother turned out to be the owner,” reconstructs de la Orden, who after returning to Argentina visited Paula and her husband Manuel Zaro at their homeland from La Plata, 60 kilometers from Buenos Aires. They both showed Clarín the fake World Cup, which they kept back home, and explained why it was so similar to the real thing: “Before the World Cup, we contacted people who were dedicated to making trophies and it took six months to make it. It has the weight of the original, is made of resin and quartz on the inside and is bathed in a gold-like color. There are some details, markings and reliefs that are not similar, but the difference is minimal.”
Manuel and Paula also shared the path of the trophy that Messi and other players had in their hands: “The idea was that the players could sign it, but in the end the trophy came into the field three times. The first was recorded and signed by a relative of (Leandro) Paredes. The second time they asked us about it and it was 45 minutes, going from one player to another, one family member to another, and they took pictures. In the stands they told me: “You lost the trophy”. We had fun, but we wanted him back. There I shouted at a few players: ‘If you see the trophy that Paredes has, it’s ours’ and in the end Lautaro Martínez brought it, who also signed it. FIFA staff came there and asked us to confirm that it was not the original.”
The trophy presented by Infantino Messi was actually only on the pitch for a few minutes: it’s called the Winner Trophy and, after being lifted by the champions’ captain, returns to FIFA headquarters in Switzerland. What then comes in is an official imitation, but unlike previous World Cups where the cup swap was done in a handful of seconds in a private unit of the stadium, the swap with the replica in Qatar was done on the same field of play, leading to confusion may have contributed.
At some point, the Zaro and Zuzulich Cups came from the stands. It’s not clear if the three World Cups coincided (and if so, only for a few seconds), but what is clear is that there were two for more than half an hour, one in each goal, where the Argentine players celebrated. one the imitation of FIFA and the other the Argentine trout.
Messi celebrates at the Lusail Stadium with a World Cup impersonation Martin Meissner (AP)
Di María, standing on Messi’s opposite side as the celebrations began, explained: “The security officers told me: ‘Please don’t give the trophy to anyone’ and I told them ‘but there is another trophy’.” , and they said to me ‘no, no, what you have is the real thing, that’s why we’re with you’. That’s what I said later to Messi (hence the captain’s laugh)”. Pablo, in turn, recounted that just a few hours after the celebrations, he found out that the genius had held in his hands the trophy he had ordered made: ” When we started looking at the photos we realized that Leo had brought him up We saw details especially of the lower part (the base) confirming that it was ours Antonella (Leo’s wife) raised this glass, also one of Messi’s children.
Far from boasting – actually it was all a confusion alien to their plans – Pablo and Paula told their story, which was celebrated at first. Other fans, however, attacked the couple, who closed their networks and never appeared in public again. In their house they keep the most famous cup in history, even if it is apocryphal.
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