"Messi will come, everything will be solved."
That's the reaction of Ashique Kuruniyan, who plays on the wing for India and Mohun Bagan, to the news that the Kerala government was trying to get Messi and his national team for a match next year. And just in case anyone missed the sarcasm, Ashique's post included newspaper clippings of athletes' problems and various governmental mess-ups in the sports world -- one of them was about Kerala's athletes going to the National Games hanging on in the aisles of a train, without even a reserved ticket, another was about three medal-winning Malayalee athletes (HS Prannoy, Eldhose Paul and Abdullah Aboobacker) leaving Kerala due to the state's disregard.
This might seem like an especially mean-spirited response to what, on the face of it, is a lifetime's opportunity to watch one of the greatest-ever footballers in live action. Messi? In India? You can almost hear the plans being made across places like Malappuram: where can tickets be sourced, who'll arrange the buses, which Messi jersey should be worn... the WhatsApp groups lighting up in anticipation. Or the scramble in newsrooms: who'll go to cover it, who'll try and get a sound bite...
But Ashique's words point to a deeper truth: Bringing Messi and Argentina to Kerala seems a grand endeavor, but what exactly does this serve to achieve? Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that Kerala has state elections in 2026; let's also simply ignore the absurd notion that watching Messi play would make a kid want to pick up football or become a better football player. The fact remains that this will not be a competitive match that they play, so there is not a chance that we'll get to see the great man operating at anywhere close to 100%. In all likelihood, even if Messi does play, it will be for a brief duration (perhaps half an hour), trying to evade full body tackles and lumps on the pitch the whole time.
The deeper truth is this: it costs a great deal of money to get Argentina to play one of these 'friendlies'. Reportedly, since the World Cup triumph, the Argentina FA charge a minimum of USD 5 million per match (or around INR 42 crores). That, as per the New York Times, was just the starting point of negotiations back in 2023, so actual figures for a match in 2025 are bound to jump up (and we're not even accounting for the cost of security and affiliated arrangements).
In a country where the football ecosystem is often starved of cash, that is a whole lot of money.
Ashique's opposition has been consistent. When the Kerala government first mooted this idea last year, his response was unambiguous: "We don't have a ground to practice on [properly] in Malappuram," he told Media One then "There are a lot of ISL places from there, a lot of India players. We practice together, and we do it by renting out turfs (small seven-a-side pitches) and doing that does not help us at all. We can only do conditioning work there. When [Igor] Stimac [the then India coach] had told me to work some aspects of my game in the off-season, I wasn't able to because I didn't have a ground... and I was so sad to tell him that." [There are two stadiums in the district, but Ashique said that those don't open for anything but tournaments].
He would later say, "I would love to see Lionel Messi play a football match in India. However, I would rather see kids from my state playing for the national team. The best way to do that is to improve our facilities, provide better sports fields, and give coaches and players more opportunities."
This was then vocally backed by two influential personalities. Stimac himself commented on it, writing: "Well done, my son, that's how we should help Indian football grow and not paying big football countries to show up here 90 minutes on the pitch. The time will come soon to play against them on the big tournaments."
The current AIFF technical committee head, and Kerala's greatest footballer, IM Vijayan had said that the money could be invested in grassroots football and the construction of more playing fields, "allowing us to produce more Indian internationals". While understanding the fans' excitement about seeing Messi, he had said, "we should consider the long-term benefits for Indian football and Kerala."
A year on from those statements, the essential truth of what they said remains. From the top to bottom there are issues everywhere you look. The senior national team is ranked 125 in the world. The highest scoring Indian in the ISL remains the now-retired-from-internationals Sunil Chhetri, and he's tenth highest overall (with three goals). The I-League is about to embark on their next now-annual existential crisis. The vision for grassroots development across the country remains as blurry as ever.
Now, the government may not be funding this (the sports minister said that would "be provided by the traders of the State"), but if there is any money being pumped into football in India, it's not all that hard to see a better use for it than hosting a friendly.