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La última copa/The Last Cup

2. The Kid's Dream

La última copa/The Last Cup

NPR

Society & Culture, Sports, Documentary

4.6763 Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From his earliest goals on the soccer fields of his hometown in Argentina to his arrival in Spain's Barça Football Club, host Jasmine Garsd follows the journey of a gifted kid who would go on to become one of the best. In Argentina, where the national sport is a fierce obsession, Lionel Messi was the one that got away.

As Garsd retraces Messi's early career, she examines the consequences of Argentina's devastating economic crisis of 2001, how it shaped Messi's path, and what it meant for her own life.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The last cup is available in English and Spanish. This is the English version.

0:05.8

To listen the version in Spanish, Volve to feed, and selectsion the episode with the

0:11.0

title in Spanish. And please note, this episode contains some explicit language and the sounds

0:17.6

of gunfire. Our story starts in 2003 with a videotape.

0:23.9

A tape gets dropped off with the coach of Argentina's

0:26.8

under 17 national soccer team.

0:30.0

The coach's name is Hugo Tokali.

0:32.2

And what he sees on that video leaves him speechless.

0:41.7

We had a video room all set up.

0:44.6

I put this tape on and it was like five plays.

0:47.0

I was impressed.

0:52.1

Tokali gets tapes like these all the time.

0:56.5

I mean, his job, after all, is finding the best young soccer talent in a country that is overflowing with soccer talent.

1:00.4

The teenager he sees on screen, though, is an Argentine kid who plays in Barcelona.

1:05.9

According to sports writer Guillem Balaget, this video is legendary.

1:11.0

You had a very small player, the smallest player, like half of the size of everybody else,

1:17.2

just dribbling everybody and scoring and assisting.

1:22.3

So he could just do all the dribbling, and then in the last moment he just gave a pass to somebody,

1:26.9

a sign of,

1:34.5

you know, that it's not all about scoring. All that was early signs of what came after.

1:44.5

Tokali faces a conundrum. He will soon take his team to Finland for the FIFA under 17 World Championship.

1:49.9

And this kid on the screen is precisely the kind of player Tocali has been looking for to improve the squad.

...

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