Meeting Messi in person? You must be choking! Delhi messimerised as star helps many rediscover their inner child

NEW DELHI: After a sleepless night, the morning air is thick with anticipation — and the usual cocktail of toxins. But today, the lungs take a back seat. This is a day for the heart. And the heart wants only one thing: Messi.By afternoon, the sun pushes through the haze, but Delhi’s air quality — or the lack of it — has the final word. We wait, disappointed yet undeterred, as the star’s arrival is delayed by nearly an hour.The wait, though, proves worth it.On the pitch, Messi is otherworldly — the delicate touch, the deft passes and a vision that borders on supernatural. You only get a glimpse of it and are left wondering what it must be to watch him live for 90 minutes.

Off the pitch, you’re struck by how unassuming he is — even at a distance. Perhaps not entirely human, after all. No attitude, no theatrics, none of the swagger you’d expect from someone called the GOAT. If not for the security orbiting him, you might mistake him for any other athlete strolling in — until the stadium erupts.Messi has 896 goals to his name. Our goal today is far simpler: to catch even a fleeting glimpse of him.

Up close or from 200 metres away — we’ll take anything.Every tap, every turn, every pass during the short exhibition match sends waves of delirium through the stands. In a country that worships cricket, there’s something unique about watching him weave magic in a cricket stadium. It strikes us that this moment will outlive the match. We rediscover our inner child, teenagers lose their composure and even the toxic air seems to clear for a heartbeat.The capital is starved of quality football, with even its ISL team — Delhi Dynamos — having been disbanded and repackaged as Odisha FC six years ago. Some would say, not wrongly, that the game remains a distant cousin to cricket in the city. There’s then something delightfully absurd about thousands gathering with a single mission: to breathe the same air as a man who has turned joy into a profession.Rodrigo de Paul and Luis Suarez — Messi’s teammates at Inter Miami and huge stars in their own right — join in the fun, kicking the ball into the crowds. But the afternoon belongs to the iconic No 10.And when he finally walks off, gliding as effortlessly as he arrived, we are left messimerised. Moments like this don’t come often. Meeting Messi in person? You must be choking! This is Messi’s world, we are just living in it.