It all started this morning: I am looking nonstop goals from Messi on Youtube, I do it because I'm in the middle of the

closure of the magazine number six. I should not be doing this. By chance I click on a compilation of pieces I had not seen before. It's a video of thousands more, I think, but then I do not. There are videos of Messis goals, and his best plays, and his assists. But this is a strange compilation: the video shows hundreds of images from two to three seconds each, in which Messi receives strong faults and does not fall. No claims or complain. No slyly looking free-kick or a penalty. In each frame, he still has his eyes on the ball while finding balance. Making inhuman efforts to avoid the fault, not looking for yellow card to the defender. There are many pieces of ferocious kicks, from obstructions, stomping and traps, treacherous trips and grabbing, never seen them all together. He goes to the ball and receives a swath in the tibia, but continues. Get hit in the heels: stumbles and keeps running. Grab him by the shirt: stir, pulls off, and goes on. I was suddenly stunned, because something looked familiar in these images. I put each piece in slow motion and I understood that Messi's eyes are always focused on the ball, but not in football or context. The modern game has a very clear set of rules for which, many times, falling to the ground is to ensure a penalty, or get to lecture the opponent defenders is suitable for future counterattacks. In these fragments, Messi seems to understand nothing about football or opportunism. He looks as if entranced, hypnotized, just desires the ball in the opposite goal; does not care about sports or the result or the law. You have to keep your eyes looking at him to understand this: he squint them, as if he couldnt read a caption, focuses the ball and not lose sight even if he is stabbed. Where had I seen that look before? Who? I knew that gesture of excessive introspection. I put the video on pause. I zoom in his eyes. And then I remembered: were Totins eyes when he lost his reason for the sponge.

In my childhood, I had a dog named Totin. Nothing touched him. It wasnt a smart dog. Thieves entered and it watched them taking the TV. The buzzer sounded and didnt seem to hear. I vomited and it never came to lick. However, when someone (my mother, my sister, myself) grabbed a sponge, a certain yellow washing dishes sponge, Totin went crazy. It wanted more than anything that sponge in the world, dying to take that yellow rectangle to the doghouse. I showed it in my right hand and Totin focused. I moved it from one side to another and never stopped staring it. It could not stop staring it.

No matter how fast I move the sponge: Totins neck moved identically in the air. Its eyes turned Japanese, attentive, intellectual. As the eyes of Messi, which are no longer those of a preteen reckless and, for a split second, become the scrutiny of Sherlock Holmes. I discovered this afternoon, watching that video, that Messi is a dog. Or a mandog. That's my theory; sorry if I have made come this far with better expectations. Messi is the first dog that plays football. It makes sense that you do not understand the rules. Dogs do not pretend to come tripping when they see a Citroen, do not complain to the referee when they miss a cat by the fence, not looking to take out a second yellow for the delivery guy. In the early football, all humans were also like that. They were behind the ball and nothing else: there were no colored cards, or offside position, or suspension after five yellow or winning on away goals. In the past, they played like Messi and Totin play. Later, football became very rare. Right now, at this time, everyone seems more interested in sports bureaucracy, laws. After a big game, we talk a whole week about legislation. Did John make himself lecture with yellow card on purpose to skip the next game and play the derby? Did Peter dive inside the area? Will Michael play invoking the clause 208 which indicates that Ernest is playing the U-17? Does the local coach sent to water the field so that visitors slip and break their skulls? Did ballboys disappear when the game was 2-1 and reappeared when score was 2-2? Would the club appeal Zachs double yellow card under the Sports Tribunal? Did referee correctly add the minutes lost while Daniel protested the suspension received by William because of the time Jake took to make the throw in? No sir. Dogs do not listen to the radio, do not read the sports media, do not understand if a match is friendly and inconsequential or a cup final. Dogs always want to take the sponge to the doghouse, whether he is sleeping or even if ticks are killing him. Messi is a dog. Breaks records of other times because only until the fifties men played football dog. Then FIFA invited us all to speak of laws and articles, and forgot that the important thing was the sponge. And then one day a sick kid appears. As at the time a sick ape stood straight and human history began. This time it was an Argentinean boy with disabilities. Disabled to say two sentences together, visibly antisocial and unable to do almost everything related to human rogue. But with an amazing talent to keep in his possession something round and inflated and lead it to the final net ending of a green plain. If you leave him alone, we wont be doing anything else. Just bring the white sphere through the posts all the time, like Sisyphus. Again and again. Guardiola said after he scored five goals in one match:

-The day he wants, he will make six. It wasnt a compliment, was the objective expression of the symptom. Lionel Messi is sick. It is a rare disease that excites me, because I loved Totin and now HE is the last mandog. And to exam that disease in detail, to see it evolving every Saturday, that is why I still prefer to live in Barcelona among any other place.