The Argentinian coach of Lamine Yamal who was called Leo

Mataró"We fell here as we could have fallen anywhere else. And then came this whole story: an Argentine named Leo who is Lamine's first coach. It's as if it were already written," smiles Leo Giordanella (Cipolletti, Patagonia; 1992). Leo Messi and Lamine Yamal first crossed paths in the World Cup final, with a victory for the Spanish national team and the young star from Rocafonda, but their relationship is full of precious connections and incredible coincidences that have united them for years.

Giordanella arrived in Catalonia when he was eleven or twelve years old, fleeing the effects of the corralito with his family: "It was a sad moment. The country was cracking and everything was going to hell. It was leaving behind a whole life to go to a country where you know no one, but it was leaving to survive and for a future." They landed in Vallès and he started playing handball. Then he tried basketball, but he played football in the park and his friends insisted he try it because he was good at it. In that park, he saw Lamine Yamal for the first time. His father, Mounir, was there with his friends and sometimes brought the child. "He made us laugh a lot because he was like a little ball that ran after a ball all the time. He was very small." Sometimes Lamine Yamal's father also played with them.

Coach and taxi for little Lamine Yamal

Giordanella started playing football at CF La Torreta and shortly after they proposed he coach the youth team. He took on the role with his partner, Esther. They went to matches with his father or, especially, with parents of children on the team. They were the only ones who didn't have transport along with the young Lamine Yamal: his parents had already separated and his mother, Sheila, worked at McDonald's in Granollers. Later, Esther got her driving license and they went in her grey Seat Leon. Very often it was the two of them and Lamine Yamal, with the shirts, bottles, and tokens in the trunk. "Esther wasn't too keen on taking children in case something happened," recalls Giordanella.

"We sat at the front and he and his shyness sat at the back, on one side. He looked like a child from a Bible school: hands crossed, very straight, not saying anything. We would joke with him and sometimes pinch his leg. He would laugh, but say almost nothing. Until "Ai Se Eu Te Pego" arrived. He always sang that song. It made me very angry because the singer was Brazilian," he explains. Sometimes they bought him a snack.

Then he was already a different player. He didn't need to be taught how to control, dribble, or pass the ball because he already had it in him. "It was a show. It was incredible. It was funny because at four, five, six years old he tried and did things like grown-ups: stepovers, nutmegs, rondos, changes of direction," he points out. He also imitated his idols in his celebrations. Giordanella hasn't forgotten the day he did Cristiano Ronaldo's celebration. "My name is Leo, but I've been a Real Madrid fan all my life. I used to bring them sweets and candies so that when they got home they would say they were from Madrid. Then my parents would get angry. I did it out of pure mischief," he confesses, laughing.

He also remembers the difficulties in making him understand that he had to play as a team. He was obsessed with the ball and didn't pass it. Giordanella explains that he was a bit of an individualist because he was used to playing alone with his father's dogs and the chairs at home, and that he left him on the bench for some games as a "punishment." "He didn't last long on the bench because if the game started to go a bit wrong, he'd come on and turn it around," he admits. At the club, they remember that when he started sharing the ball, he valued the assist almost more than the goal, as he does now. The other battle came after training: there was no way to get him off the pitch. Sometimes Lamine Yamal's mother would call him to ask if he could wait a while with him because she had to leave work late.

The move to Barça, another dimension for Lamine Yamal and Leo Giordanella

In 2014, he made the leap to Barça. "I found it very funny to go see him because I had never been to such a formal, serious, rigid, and organized place. It was a world that shocked me a lot, an environment that fascinated me," he explains. He remembers having legends like Edgar Davids or Patrick Kluivert sitting next to him. "He continued to stand out above the others despite being at Barça," he highlights. He treasures a photo from a day he went to see him at the Joan Gamper sports city and then took him to the McDonald's in Granollers, with his mother.

Giordanella admits that on Sunday he lived the final with a divided heart, "50%", but confesses that he was wearing the Argentine jersey and that in the hours before the match he sent a message to Lamine Yamal. He told him, half as a joke, half in earnest, that he loved him, but that he also loved his country and that if he scored a goal he would kill him.

"It's crazy. Back then we used to say what he could become, but you never imagine this. He has been European champion at seventeen and world champion at nineteen, plus everything he has done with Barça. It's crazy," he confesses. "On Sunday, a few tears fell from my eyes," acknowledges Giordanella, during a break from his shift as a truck driver.