Hundreds of articles and even more social media posts have been written in awe of Lionel Messi since he delivered a masterclass in attacking in the semi-finals against Croatia in the World Cup.
The PSG superstar opened the scoring from the penalty spot before gorgeously setting up Argentina’s third goal of the game.
The little master has been on fire in Qatar, scoring 5 times in six games, and assisting three more. His exploits have helped his nation reach the finals of perhaps the most prestigious tournament of sport.
Win this and he will once and for solidify the GOAT status that has often come under contention from his closest rival, Cristiano Ronaldo.
Among the various tweets, Insta posts and YouTube compilations since the game, one particular tweet has since made the headlines.
A simple tweet by Endrick, the Brazilian prodigy, suddenly started catching a lot of heat.
The tweet simply said “Messi e absurdo cara que isso” with an alien emoji.
It translates to “Messi is absurd man. What is this”.
The 16-year-old Palmeiras player posted this after the third Argentine goal.
Pretty innocuous. We know what you are thinking. Why did this catch heat?
Well, the below should make it more obvious.
Fabrizio Romano, a pretty reliable reporter when it comes to football transfers, confirmed on 8th December that Endrick will be moving to Real Madrid for upwards of €70m.
In fact, rivals Barcelona also confirmed their interest in the highly rated youngster, but the player chose Madrid.
Now, you are joining Real Madrid, one of the biggest clubs in the world. There is one basic thing expected of you off the field. Do not, in any circumstance, praise Barcelona, Messi or their other players.
Praising Messi violated this sacred unsaid rule.
Madridistas, it seems, were pretty upset with his tweet, with many responding angrily, leading to the teenager deleting his tweet.
It was indeed sad to see a 16-year-old getting forced into deleting a simple tweet that was, in all fairness, not at all far from reality or damning in any sort of manner.
In fact, only about an hour or so later, Croatian legend and Real Madrid fielder, who crashed out of the competition that same game, spoke to the press and said that he hoped Messi won the Cup as he is the best player in history.
Here is this player, a Madrid legend, praising the opposition and being an overall class act.
Just goes to show that such tribal hate and disregard between the two clubs exist only online where people can hide behind their screens with little regard for the actual humans who play for the clubs.
If it has reached a point wherein a mere compliment for a player can extract so much negativity, maybe we ought to rethink if social media is really the place we want to spend so much of our time every day.
It may be a minor incident this time. But do we really want to wait for what happens next time?
