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'Gracias': Argentina welcome Messi and its world champion team

Argentinians feel "a pride so large that one's body cannot hold”

Argentina-celebrations

Aerolíneas Argentinas flight 1915 was tracked from Rome to Buenos Aires the way children track Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Radio stations in Argentina reported periodically its path across the bulge of Africa and voices turned excited when it checked in at the Dakkar transponder. All that remained was the flight across the Atlantic.

The expected arrival at 19h was delayed to 2:30am. It did not matter. Argentinians would not sleep. The flight was bringing home Lionel Messi, Emiliano Martinez, coach Lionel Scaloni, and their world champion compatriots. It would be an arrival for Argentine history. A happening not to be missed.

Earlier in the day, fans climbed the walls at the entrance to the Argentine Football Association (AFA) and added the third star to its logo. Yellow stars bought and homemade were being added to AFA logos everywhere.

It was the words of the famed Argentine broadcaster Victor Hugo Morales in closing his World Cup broadcast after the game that Argentinians repeated when talking to THE WEEK about how they felt—"A pride so large that one's body cannot hold."

“How do I repay football and the world champion team for all you have given me,” asked Morales in a closing recap that has reverberated in Argentinian hearts across the world. Thanking Maradona and Messi, in emotive words that trembled, he went on to say, “I owe you much, so much that I will walk the desert eternally saying—asking myself—how can I pay you back? And there will be no way...”

In Buenos Aires, in the early hours of Tuesday, the crowd was out to find a way to thank their new national heroes. By thousands they sang the repurposed song that had cheered the team during the cup:

I cried for eight years the final with Germany,

But it is over now

Because this year in Qatar

The final with the French

We won, father!

Boys, now all that's left is to celebrate

Now we won the third cup,

Now we are world champions

And to Diego we tell him, rest in peace

With Don Diego and La Tota

For all of eternity...”

The team had posted a video of themselves playing the beat on the plane's backrests and singing the now iconic Argentinian 2022 World Cup anthem.

When the plane finally touched down at 2:24 am, fans at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires province cried at the sight of Messi on its illuminated tail. “It gave us such emotion, what pride, gracias Messi,” said Teresa Valdivier (32), who hugged her husband as the two of them jumped with joy, tears filling their eyes, yelling as she shared the moment with THE WEEK.

When the plane's door opened, the crowds watched on their cell phones, it was Messi who came first, wearing the gold medal, decked in a blue sweatshirt and shorts, he lifted the shining cup to the delight of the waiting crowds. 

“Gracias Diego! Gracias Messi!” shouts tried to answer Morales' question to himself, but Valdivier's husband Hugo said later it didn't feel nearly enough.

The tarmac was laid out with a red carpet, lined by uniformed officers in crisp white, standing at attention as the world champions walked to a waiting open-topped double-decker bus with images of the team and “Campeones del Mundo” (World Champions), written on its sides and back.

Messi brimmed with smiles as he carried the golden cup into the bus; there was a bewildered delight on the faces of the world champions as they followed their team captain. Messi made his way to the back of the open deck, and caressed the trophy as if to ensure it was real.

The song kept telling Maradona he could rest in peace, that they were world champions again as the bus headed the short distance to the headquarters of the Argentinian Football Association where the players would rest before the planned noon celebrations in the centre of the city.

Despite the hour, thousands, as many as 20-30 deep lined the way, and thousands more followed the caravan that made its way slowly taking over an hour and a half to cover a distance that Google puts at 10 minutes during the day.

The three-starred bus was surrounded by waves of people twisting their blue-and-white flags, some men even taking their national team jerseys off to swirl them as they sang to Maradona in the heavens.

But it was Messi and the world champions they wanted to see and thank. The chants “Gracias! Gracias!” were heard between the strains of the song as a police cordon locked arms and struggled to keep the way clean. The screens of cellular phones capturing the moment lit up the night around the bus, and wrapped the scene in an unreal aura.

With helicopters overhead, the moving street party was carried live by radio and television stations across the country. “What madness!” Cameras everywhere wanted to record the moment, go get themselves in front of the bus, to make sure it was for real. “To make sure they really existed, that they were not extraterrestrials,” said the reporter of Argentina's as.com. It was 3:30 in the morning and the fiesta was just getting under way.

Even at that hour, people were already filling the area around the Obelisk and Avenida 9 de Julio, one of the world's great and grandest streets, which was filled and overflowing during the final and is planned as the site of the celebration that would culminate with the team at the Evita balcony of the country's Casa Rosada presidential palace.

Argentina has declared Tuesday a national holiday, but that was redundant, the country, which has been in the grip of a financial crisis and has recently seen its former president sentenced to prison, had already taken a holiday since the moment the World Cup was clinched. 

“This is the show of our lives, the show to have seen the best player in the world, Messi was the best player of the championship... so much joy,” said the as.com broadcasters. “It smells of triumph,” said people into their microphones.

Argentinian flags held high in national pride as the team bus passed by, then they waived and swirled in the capital of the country that, like Morales, found it hard to find its collective voice of appropriate thanks for such joy. 

Fireworks lit up the 4:30am Buenos Aires skies as the team reached AFA's installations to rest and regroup before the emotional day ahead.

Gracias Messi”

Diego, descansa en paz” (Rest in peace now, Diego).

Those two refrains are certain to fill the air around Buenos Aires and near the world champions as they are officially welcomed on Tuesday.

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