Messi, Zarra, whistles and silence

Last Saturday’s game at the Camp Nou finished with a video tribute to Messi and both Bartomeu and Zubizarreta, who appeared with messages of congratulation, both received an enormous whistle of derision from the fans in the stadium. It must have been hard, on a night of celebration, the Barça fans made their feelings known. Later, surprisingly, Messi didn’t want to talk to the media about his feat. Not even on Barça TV who wouldn’t have asked any awkward questions. Messi celebrated on the pitch with his team-mates, who held him aloft, but the episode still leaves a degree of disquiet.

This is a shame, a few words from Messi would have been global news and a great endorsement for La Liga. I mentioned yesterday that, one of the positive elements of this story is that it has projected the name and legacy of Telmo Zarra into the public domain. We’ve always been aware, that outside of Spain he was a relative unknown. Now people know that in the league, at Athletic Club, there was a fantastic goal-scorer so good that it has taken seventy years and one Leo Messi to beat his incredible record. All the profile that this story generates has to be good for the reputation of the league.

Despite all this there we’re still unsure if the record was broken on Saturday or if it’s still standing. Varying sources attribute anywhere from 242 and 265 goals scored by Zarra. According to statistics expert, Mister Chip, the figure is 253 goals. The information he backs this statistic up with his quite credible, but it’s not something to get too bogged down with. Messi is an amazing talent whose final goal tally will leave that of Zarra well-behind irrespective of which figure we attribute to the Athletic Club legend. The curious thing is that when Messi beat the record with a fantastic ‘hat trick’ on Saturday, and in so doing break the figure cited as ‘official’, that it would provoke this reaction of isolation. Something is not right. Something that explains the whistles against Bartomeu and Zubizarreta.

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