who painted the card players
It was business as accepted at the Camp Nou on the night of April 9, 2011. Barcelona exhausted Almeria 3-1 in La Liga as Lionel Messi popped in two goals. Activity on the angle was candied and apprehensible for the 23-year-old Barca star. A few weeks later, he would acme addition trophy-laden analysis beneath Pep Guardiola by scoring in a beating of Manchester United in the UEFA Champions Alliance final at Wembley Stadium.
But on this night, while allowance Barca defended the achievement over Almeria, Messi's earlier brother Matias was allotment of a altered arena in their hometown of Rosario in Argentina. A few annual afore 11 p.m., two men on a red motorbike collection by his abode in Saladillo—a quiet neighbourhood about a dozen blocks from breadth the Messi ancestors grew up on the south ancillary of the city—and opened fire.
At atomic four shots hit his home, with a brace added bullets peppering a neighbour's house. Messi's mother's home, alone 100 metres abroad in the aforementioned complex, able unscathed. The neighbourhood was stunned. The next-door neighbour whose abode was additionally attempt at said it was the aboriginal time an adventure like this had occurred in the 50 years she had been active there, per La Capital. Addition took a dim appearance of Matias for agreeable agitation aloft them, adage he was a "problematic" adolescent man, according to a adventure in El Mundo.
Three years afterwards and added than 1,200 kilometres away, Cristiano Ronaldo accomplished a abnormally timed affiliation with his brother too. According to Guillem Balague's Cristiano Ronaldo: The Biography, Ronaldo fabricated a alliance with his earlier brother, Hugo, that if he kicked his bubbler habit, Ronaldo would address a Champions Alliance appellation to him. Ronaldo fabricated acceptable on his promise, scoring 17 goals en avenue to Real Madrid's 10th Champions Alliance celebration in 2014.
While Real Madrid's players acclaimed on the angle afterwards acquisition Atletico Madrid 4-1 in that final at Lisbon's Estadio da Luz, Ronaldo absolved over to the seats breadth his brother was sitting and beckoned him on to the accommodation to accept his jersey. The brace aggregate an affecting embrace. It has clearly been a difficult road. Hugo has had a continued action with biologic addiction and alcoholism. Matias, too, has fabricated mistakes.
Football's two greatest stars accept scaled untold heights over the accomplished decade. Meanwhile, the tribulations endured by their brothers—who remained in their old neighbourhoods and sometimes succumbed to their dangers while Messi and Ronaldo begin fortune—offer cautionary tales about how things ability accept gone for the footballers.
Both Matias and Hugo accept struggled with their allotment of perilous temptations, from biologic addiction to petty abomination to advertence with some alarming people.
"They are about the Maradona allotment of the anecdotal of anniversary one," says Jimmy Burns, columnist of an accessible book on the animosity amid Ronaldo and Messi. "If they hadn't existed, the belief of Messi and Ronaldo would possibly be absolutely different.
"In Hugo's case, in agreement of actuality the son of an alcoholic ancestor [who] never did annihilation in his activity afar from actuality a alleged soldier; for Ronaldo, [his father's failings] became a motivation. In Matias' case ... he backward in Rosario and absitively to accomplish a active in a corrupt, agitated society. In a sense, addition had to draw the abbreviate straw."
This adventure is about what Matias and Hugo did with those sheaves of luck, about how their lives accept played out and what could accept been for their illustrious brothers.
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When the rich from Barcelona appetite to escape the messiness of activity in the city, they decamp to places like Castelldefels. It's a asleep bank apple 15 afar bottomward the coastline, perched amid an amaranthine albino bank and the aerial Garraf Natural Park. Its affiliation admeasurement success by altitude. The wealthier the homeowner, the college up the hillside in Castelldefels families go. Leo Messi's ancestors lives at the top of the hill.
Messi's team-mate Luis Suarez is a neighbour. Messi's parents alive in one of the abutting villages over, Gava Mar. Aback Messi's next-door neighbour's abode came on the bazaar in 2013, he airtight it up, per Rory Smith for The Times.
He cast his privacy, and the aloneness of Castelldefels enables him to alive as accustomed a activity as is accessible for the best acclaimed footballer in the game. He gets his bristles cut in a bounded barbershop. He eats in the village's restaurants, like Fosbury Cafe and the Argentinian steakhouse Ushuaia. He can airing forth the bank unmolested.
The adverse with his old neighbourhood in Rosario, Argentina's third-largest city, couldn't be starker. It's the affectionate of boondocks breadth the arch of badge was arrested afresh for trafficking drugs, per La Nacion. The aboriginal Messi ancestors home in La Bajada is archetypal of abounding humble, banal neighbourhoods in Argentina's cities. It's not a shantytown adjustment like, say, Diego Maradona's adolescence barrio Villa Fiorito in Buenos Aires, but airing a block or two in the amiss direction, and you can acquisition yourself in trouble.
There's a activity of annoyance about the place, abnormally at night. The day I toured it with a bounded driver, he warned me not to amble alfresco with a camera buzz for abhorrence I would get captivated up. Two annual later, we were chock-full at a accepted badge roadblock.
But it's additionally the abode Matias Messi calls home. His earlier brother, Rodrigo, like Leo, took a added adequate aisle in life. He lives in Barcelona and is captivated in the circadian activity of their adolescent brother, alive as a scheduler for Leo. Rodrigo additionally helps their father, Jorge, administer the Messi brand.
It can't consistently accept been accessible for Matias. He was built-in in 1982, bristles years and a day afore Leo, whose face he has tattooed on his larboard high arm. Matias had already apparent affiance as a footballer, decidedly as a defender. He was taken on at Newell's Old Boys adolescence academy but was cut afloat afterwards a season.
The Messi ancestors originally confused to Barcelona in 2001, aback the adolescent football brilliant was 13. Argentina's abridgement had aloof tanked. It looked like a dream move for the family, accepting to alpha afresh in a prosperous, hip European city. It didn't assignment out as planned, though.
The blow of Leo's ancestors couldn't achieve bottomward in the city—their little sister, Maria Sol, for instance, was afraid in her new Catalan academy for actuality a "sudaca," a aspersing appellation for a South American, and Matias absent his girlfriend, Roxana Vallejos—so they alternate to Rosario afterwards a few months forth with their mother. Leo, with his ancestor as chaperone, backward in Barcelona so he could chase his dream.
Back in Rosario, Matias had a child, Tomas, in 2005. Addition one, Luana, followed a brace of years ago. He affiliated Roxana, whom he started dating aback he was 11 and whose ancestors lived a bald 30 metres from the Messis.
On the assignment front, Matias jumped around. He ran a greengrocers and a kiosk in the burghal centre for a while. Later, he dabbled in business assignment for his brother, Leo. That didn't last, either. These days, he juggles a brace of business interests for the Messi empire—managing a gym, Casa Amarilla, and VIP, a restaurant bar with copse panelling and characterless steaks bottomward by Rosario's beach that is registered in his father's name.
Matias has also achieved some ballyhoo on amusing media for face off in defence of his brother. For example, in 2013, he mocked Ronaldo's poor bays booty in allegory with his brother's in a cheep that was best up by columnist about the world, as able-bodied as his baiting of "the f--king Real Madrid admirers who abhorrence me," as appear by El Confidential. His Twitter annual has been abeyant aback April 2016, but he has still begin himself accepting the amiss affectionate of attention.
Despite his connection to one of the best accustomed abstracts in soccer, Matias has spent abundant of his time affiliated to a alternation of far added ambiguous choices. The accessible almanac of his abomination stretches aback to 2000, aback he was allegedly complex in a robbery. That was followed by an declared advance a year afterwards and an allegation of aggressive behaviour in 2002, per La Capital (h/t El Pais). The accuse were alone in anniversary instance, but the issues kept axle up.
In 2008, Matias was arrested for illegally accustomed a .32-calibre pistol, according to El Pais. In 2011, his abode was attempt up. In October 2015, he was pulled over in his Audi A5 and arrested for possessing an unregistered .22-calibre pistol. He scrapped with the badge who chock-full him and was appropriately taken into custody.
In September 2016, a cloister alone the case brought adjoin him for illegally possessing the .22-calibre pistol. Instead, he was ordered to drillmaster football classes for four hours per anniversary for a year with a bounded club, Leones de Rosario. He was additionally instructed to pay a accomplished of 8,000 pesos (£350) and to "abstain from drugs and/or alcohol," according to 20 minutos.
Matias beneath an account with Bleacher Report, and the Messi ancestors is advised in its affairs with the media. German de los Santos, a abomination anchorman based in Rosario, says: "The media actuality in Rosario is actual accurate with them."
Equally adverse is those with whom Matias has been apparent blind out. In October 2015, Noticias, a celebrated account annual in Argentina, appear a diffuse commodity about him and the unsavoury aggregation he has kept.
In a photo appear by Noticias that accompanied the article, Matias is assuming abaft some of the best alarming men in Rosario. The photo appears to accept been taken ancient amid 2010 and 2012, says De los Santos, who is the columnist of a book advantaged Los Monos, which is the name of a Rosario-based alignment advised one of Argentina's best alarming biologic cartels.
Matias looks out of abode in the photo—he's continuing timidly, a green adolescence amid big, bad men. Several of those pictured accept ties to the Barra Bravas, the organised bent gangs that accept an adamant anchor on Rosario's two Primera Analysis football clubs, Newell's Old Boys and Rosario Central.
Alongside Matias in the photo stands Cesar Aron Trevez (nicknamed El Ojudo), a man who was confined in December 2012 and answerable with annihilation and biologic possession. According to Noticias, Trevez testified as a adequate attestant in a delving of Los Monos.
Fourth from the larboard in the photo is a man alleged Ramon Ezequiel Machuca, his face half-obscured by the man continuing in advanced of him. Machuca goes by the alias Monchi Cantero after actuality aloft as a advance adolescent by the Cantero family. He's one of the leaders of Los Monos. He was arrested in June 2016 by Interpol on suspicion of "homicide and adulterous association," appear Noticias.
He was approved in February 2017, forth with Mariano "El Gordo" Salomon (another affiliate of Los Monos who additionally appears alongside Matias in that abominable photo) for three homicides, declared animus killings for the annihilation of Monchi Cantero's brother, according to La Capital.
While on the run as a fugitive, Cantero gave an interview to the television base Telenoche in January 2016. He appeared on awning cutting sunglasses, a affected bristles and a baseball cap that apprehend "El Mabu" (shorthand for "the best capital fugitive"). He was able about his accord with Matias Messi.
"I had acquaintance with the kid because we played football at Batallon 121, breadth there acclimated to be tournaments every Saturday," he said. "I apperceive him from arena football, from bistro barbeques, from activity out to brawl clubs. Rosario is a baby city. Everybody knows anniversary other."
Cantero additionally batten about his ties to two added football exiles from Rosario—Atletico Madrid abecedarian Angel Correa and Sevilla's Anytime Banega, whose brother played in the aforementioned abecedarian football alliance aggregation as Matias. The account blow went viral in Argentina.
Carlos Varela is a advocate for Los Monos. He oozes charm, wears acute apparel and has the affectionate of deep, blatant articulation that sounds like it has been blood-soaked in whiskey. He knows the Messi family. Varela argues Matias is a victim of his name and the media's appetite for sensationalism. He says Matias' brushes with the law are "inconsequential" at a acknowledged level.
Several sources accept accepted Matias doesn't accept business links with Los Monos. A agent from the region's Ministry of Security, which is amenable for arrest abandon and abomination in football, told B/R: "He comes from a simple family. I apperceive Don Jorge [Messi's father] rescued him from this world, but he lives in the barrio, and those are his friends. It is a boxy barrio."
I asked Varela what it charge be like to be Matias, arena additional dabble to his kid brother. Does accepting a acclaimed brother adapt the way Matias charge accede bodies friends?
"It will never be bright to you why they access you," he says. "Are they your accompany because your brother is famous, or do they absolutely appetite to be your friends? All of this charge appear to all these bodies that are cool famous. I mean, the accompany that appear to you, you don't apperceive why they appear to you. Imagine: They accept the aforementioned aftermost name, and that is a aftermost name that opens doors everywhere."
Cristiano Ronaldo's name opens doors too—just about anywhere in the world. His mother, Dolores Aveiro, christened him afterwards U.S. admiral Ronald Reagan. His ancestors alarm him Ronaldo, not Cristiano. Ronaldo's alone brother, Hugo Aveiro, goes by their father's surname; he owns the building on Madeira that food Ronaldo's football medals, memorabilia and lifesize waxworks.
The brothers are close. They anniversary together. Ronaldo is asperse to Hugo's son. Growing up, however, Ronaldo led a abundantly abstracted activity from his brother (although they aggregate a room), according to Fernao Sousa, Ronaldo's godfather. Hugo is a decade earlier and absent abundant of his adolescence aggressive substance-abuse issues while Ronaldo was absorption on his beginning football career.
Hugo was built-in during the year their father, Jose Dinis—or Dinis, as anybody alleged him—spent beyond with the Portuguese army in Angola. Hugo larboard academy early, afore he was 17. He formed for a spell with an aluminum company. He ran a painting aggregation for a while, but it was his battles with addiction that captivated him.
According to Balague's adventures of Ronaldo, Hugo started application adamantine drugs in the backward 1990s. Aback he aboriginal got hooked, his mother took out a accommodation to pay for his acceptance to a adjust clinic. He succumbed afresh two years later. He got apple-pie afresh but relapsed intermittently. Today, Hugo is sober.
Hugo lives a quiet life. He will generally blooper abroad from the building to arch aback up to their old neighbourhood, Santo Antonio. He'll while abroad a few hours arena cards with neighbours and accompany in Joel Santos' pub—a no-name enactment that locals alarm "Joel's bar"—at the bottom of Quinta do Falcao, the artery breadth the old Ronaldo ancestors home acclimated to be. The abode was gutted about a decade ago. Now the amplitude operates as a baby car park.
Santos, who knows the family, is the aforementioned age as Hugo. He bought his bar 12 years ago. A above able footballer, he played as a midfielder for the island's arch analysis team, Maritimo. He has a photo, which he says he's accepting affected so he can adhere it in the bar, of him about to accouterment Ronaldo during a Sporting CP vs. Maritimo bout in November 2002.
Hugo was a appropriate footballer himself, left-footed and a striker, Santos recalled. He played in the breezy artery leagues in Santo Antonio. The abecedarian were five-a-side, and they fabricated a cup for the acceptable team. Boys of 15 and 16 years of age would mix it up with men.
"I didn't apperceive Hugo aback then," Santos says. "But everybody who knew him says that he was a bigger footballer than Ronaldo."
Carlos Pereira, a acquaintance of Ronaldo's who has been admiral of Maritimo for 20 years, is sceptical.
"Nowadays, bodies say that Hugo was a acceptable player, but that has annihilation to do with the affectionate of football that Ronaldo plays," Pereira says. "Hugo was a artery player. He played. He drank. He slept. Aback Ronaldo started to play, he played in a club with a structure, with coaches and directors. It is a altered affectionate of football. Hugo may accept been skilful, but it was as a artery footballer, arena adjoin his accompany in an abecedarian way. Annihilation like Ronaldo."
Their father looms over the two of them. He died in 2005 from an alcoholism-related alarmist disease, as Ronaldo batten about in a 2015 account with Matthew Syed for The Times. His nature, his access and his absence explains a lot about the routes his sons' lives took.
Dinis' activity was complicated. Those who are abutting to the ancestors on the island—including Pereira, neighbours, Sousa, the advocate who brokered Ronaldo's move to Sporting in 1997 and associates of the football club breadth Dinis formed as a kitman—speak affectionately of him. They allocution of a simple, affable person. A friendly, airy man who acclimated to brawl whenever his club, Andorinha, won a match. Nobody remembers him anytime adopting his voice. Aback Nacional, the added big able football club on the island, airtight up Ronaldo as a 10-year-old, Dinis never interfered with the coaches' work.
That portrait, though, doesn't fit with the adumbration in Anthony Wonke's 2015 documentary, Ronaldo, that Dinis abused his wife. And according to Wright Thompson for ESPN The Magazine, there were troubles in the alliance activity as far aback as the mid-1970s, aback Dinis spent 13 months in Africa with the Portuguese army.
What is assertive is Dinis adored Ronaldo. According to Wonke's documentary, he never laid a feel on his son. The brace went everywhere together. Pereira says Ronaldo was like a dog on a leash, consistently afterward him. He consistently capital to be with his dad.
Dinis took immense pride in the advance of Ronaldo's career. Aback Nacional active him, Dinis put his claimed allegiances abreast as a Maritimo fan, traveling to every bold Ronaldo played, sitting at the advanced of the Nacional bus beside the driver. He acclimated to abrade the affidavit for account of his son and cut out the reports.
He took beneath absorption in Hugo's affairs of authoritative it as a able footballer, says Joao Ornelas, who lives beyond the artery from breadth Ronaldo's old home acclimated to be. Dinis admired to watch Hugo blame a ball, but he saw article appropriate in Ronaldo that was missing in his earlier son.
Ronaldo is altered to the blow of his family, Ornelas says: "He studied. He knows how to allege well, how to accurate himself. He speaks altered languages. Aback he speaks, he's honest."
Funchal, the city on Madeira breadth Hugo has lived all his life, isn't awfully distressed, but it has its amusing problems like any place. It has a citizenry of a little over 100,000. Best houses accept a appearance of the ocean. It's attenuate that Madeira's badge force is afflicted with a annihilation analysis or a case of agitated crime. According to the best contempo civic study, Madeira has the everyman prevalence of biologic use in Portugal, abaft Lisbon, the Algarve and the country's added regions.
Drink is seemingly everywhere, though. The island is acclaimed for its wine. It's a abode breadth one may appear beyond a middle-aged brace propping anniversary added up, accepting had a bit too much, in the average of the afternoon on Ronaldo's old street.
"Dinis drank, but again so did lots of bodies at that time," Pereira says. Hugo fell into a agnate trap—just with a altered intoxicant.
"Growing up, Ronaldo's two sisters were abundant afterpiece to him than his brother because his brother was acceptable like his father," Pereira says. "The guys who amidst Hugo were a altered affectionate of people, the junkies of the neighbourhood. They were all demography booze and drugs."
Ronaldo got lucky; Hugo had bad luck, according to Ornelas. "Hugo approved drugs, and he got hooked," he adds. "Once or twice, he blanket things from home to advertise and buy drugs, but nowadays he's OK. He's a nice guy. He's clean.
"The aberration is that Hugo consistently lived actuality in the neighbourhood. Ronaldo went to Lisbon aback he was alone 12. He had added abundance than he had actuality on this street. He had added bodies attractive afterwards him. He had rules that he had to follow. Everything afflicted in that moment."
Hugo took a altered aisle in life. He was a artefact of his ambiance on Madeira, which he never left. He beneath an account with Bleacher Report. He rarely speaks to the press, alone accouterment the casual vox pop about his brother's football career.
In Wonke's 2015 documentary, Hugo opened up briefly about his battles with booze and biologic addiction. He maintains his problems with addiction grew out of his time spent alive alongside his dad in architecture as abundant as the access his old neighbourhood, which was austere with biologic corruption during his youth, had on him.
"Ronaldo got a altered adventitious in activity than Hugo," Pereira says. "Hugo consistently lived there. He backward in that environment. Aback Ronaldo was absolutely young, bodies noticed he had a appropriate talent. Forth the way, bodies took affliction of him. He was nurtured. It fabricated him feel special. It fabricated him accept he could booty a altered aisle in activity than his brother and his father."
The paths Hugo and Matias travelled veered a actor afar from those of their acclaimed footballing brothers with their gilded lifestyles and assorted homes. The calm ancestors fabricated altered choices.
Matias angry his aback on Barcelona; Hugo backward put on Madeira. They anesthetized up the adventitious to alive in the slipstream of their brilliant ancestors on Europe's mainland. Instead, they never able their old neighborhoods; they remained, accessible to its temptations, always in the adumbration of Messi and Ronaldo's exploits.
All quotes and advice acquired immediate unless contrarily indicated.
Follow Richard on Twitter: @Richard_Fitz
