It is Wednesday morning and Atletico Madrid’s Argentine left-back Emiliano Insua leaves training clad in designer clothes and clutching a designer wash bag.
He pauses to sip mate, the caffeine-infused drink popular in Argentina, before climbing into his high-end Italian sports car. He then drives away, looking every bit the superstar footballer, past a group of autograph hunters and television cameras by the exit gate.
Like any top-flight footballer in a major European league, Insua is well-remunerated and enjoys the trappings of his wealth. The former Boca Juniors, Liverpool, Galatasaray and Sporting defender has an enviable lifestyle, yet he is ostensibly a reserve player who has started just one Spanish Primera Liga game this season. Yet he is still someone whom the young Argentina players in the UAE for the Fifa Under 17 World Cup would like to follow.
He may not be Lionel Messi, but in their eyes their compatriot has still made it. He got the big move to Europe, he has played for several big clubs and his life looks great to impressionable young men.
It was Insua’s performances for Argentina at U17 level that saw him scouted by Liverpool. Scouts are more inclined to watch U17 games as rules are restrictive for players moving abroad before 16.
In the words of one agent who represents several English Premier League players: “It’s why scouts need to be in the UAE this week. Not only will they have access to players they wouldn’t usually see, but the big clubs have a chance of getting them in a year or two. It’s much harder to get a player at 20 when he’s on a professional contract and his reputation is enhanced. Now is the time to swoop.”
Lionel Messi’s rise as a footballer was not so conventional. He did not play for Argentina at Under 17 level, because, as now, their team used players based in Argentina.
Gradually, word of Messi’s brilliance at Barcelona began to spread and Argentina could ignore him no more. By the time he was 19, he travelled to the Under 20 World Cup in the Netherlands, in July 2005.
He was the standout in the competition, top scoring with six goals in seven games as Argentina triumphed. Barca had always known that they had a potential star in their midst, but maybe the speed with which the club president Joan Laporta hotfooted it to the Netherlands to improve Messi’s contract illustrates that maybe they did not realise just how good he was.
Messi’s rise was meteoric. He had been playing for the Barcelona B team in front of 2,000 fans. Although he featured in seven first-team league games and became, at 17, the youngest player to score for Barcelona, Messi accumulated just 77 first-team minutes before the U20 World Cup.
Yet with Real Madrid, Inter Milan, Glasgow Rangers and AC Milan showing interest, Messi’s reserve player contract of around £100,000 a year was upgraded to one worth up to £3 million. The deal, signed in 2005, was to run until 2014 and contained an improbable £100m buyout clause – the same amount as Ronaldinho’s.
Messi has since had his contract upgraded several times. He is an inspiration for every Argentine, but it will be almost impossible to follow arguably the greatest footballer ever.
For the young Argentines in the UAE, who play Iran in a Group E game in Dubai tonight, their dream will consist of breaking into the first team of a top-flight Argentina club. That would provide a great living for most. The best ones will earn a move to Europe, where the standard of football is greater and the salaries far higher.
If everything goes well, they may end up being stars at big clubs, like Carlos Tevez, Javier Mascherano, Pablo Zabaleta, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Angel Di Maria, Sergio Aguero and Gonzalo Higuain.
Insua, a World Cup winner with Argentina’s U20s in 2007, has played four times for Argentina’s full national team.
Yet he has accumulated riches beyond the dreams of the current crop of U17 players. They will rightly be motivated by football, at present, but they know the opportunity of financial security for life can come with a move across the Atlantic. And they know they are being closely watched in the UAE.
sports@thenational.ae
Iran v Argentina, 8pm, Al Jazeera Sport +2
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