FRENCH CAPITAL HAILS NEW KING
IT felt like a state occasion. The police vans, the cordoned off roads and the hundreds of cameras feeding every movement to television sets around the world. The sort of ceremony reserved for royalty.
To the masses outside the Parc des Princes, every second of this was a coronation.
Lionel Messi only stepped on to the street for 60 seconds but that was enough for the thousands of fans to anoint him the new king of Paris. He walked a few metres out of his Mercedes van to wave, signalling the beginning of a new chapter for French football.
‘Messi est Paris!’ they chanted. Flares were lit as locals climbed upon bins, fences or whatever they could find for a better vantage point. The police even told children to move away from the front to avoid the inevitable crush.
‘This is the biggest signing we’ve ever made,’ said one supporter. ‘Messi is the best in the world. With Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe, we’re going to win the Champions League. Paris is going to be the centre of the football universe.’
That is exactly what it felt like outside the Parc de Princes yesterday. A suburb that would typically be quiet on a Tuesday afternoon was bustling with news crews from everywhere from Iran to South Africa to Japan.
Opposite the stadium, the club shop had its busiest day of the summer. In the world’s fashion capital, that blue polyester top became the hottest item in town. Although you will have to wait until tomorrow to have Messi’s name printed on the back.
‘We’re not allowed to sell them yet,’ said the shop assistants at lunchtime, as word got out about the new arrival.
‘Back together,’ wrote Neymar on Instagram, early in the afternoon, unable to keep the secret.
The club posted a teaser on Twitter, showing six Ballons d’Or in front of the Eiffel Tower and a space in the dressing room between Neymar and Mbappe. As the news spread, the fans gathered. Many arrived in the morning and spent hours chanting his name before Messi turned up at around 7pm. The crowd grew from 10s to 100s to 1,000s as the rumours turned into reality.
There were Argentina and Barcelona shirts and even some from Rosario’s Newell’s Old Boys. One young couple from Holland spent the first day of their honeymoon waiting around outside the stadium. ‘Once we saw the news, we couldn’t miss it,’ they said.
In the early afternoon, Messi was pictured at Barcelona airport with his wife Antonela and their children, Thiago, 8, Mateo, 5, and Ciro, 3. Antonela later posted a selfie alongside her husband as they sat on their private jet waiting to fly to their new home. Messi was wearing an adidas T-shirt, but the next time he was seen after landing at Bourget airport at around 3pm, he had changed into a top with
Ici C’est Paris on the front. He was escorted to a local hospital for his medical before arriving at the stadium to a frenzy of screams, sirens and whistles. And then, in a flash, he was gone, whisked away to his new home.
The coronation was complete.