Messi finally saw it.

Good morning. I’m no longer sure whether this is a newsletter or just an email. I think by now we know each other better than it might seem.

It’s 8:42 in the morning. I’m sipping mate and listening to La Sole in the background (if you can, listen along as you read this email), and I can’t help getting emotional. Maybe when we’re feeling this way, we look for a little more of whatever brings all those feelings to the surface.

In the last newsletter, I told you we’d created a project for Messi and that we had a very simple dream: for it to reach him. For him to see it at some point.

Today, I can tell you how the story ends: he saw it. And he liked it, too.

Before I go on, a quick apology for missing the last edition. We’ve had a lot of projects on the go, and the newsletter ended up running late. Among other things, we’re putting the finishing touches on the new /nk website. But that’s a story for the next newsletter.

Now, back to this one. It all started on a Sunday in June, when I sent Mati, our CTO, a screenshot of a domain that cost something like ten dollars. The message said: “What if we made a website bringing together the captain’s last dances, stats and magic?”

That’s how this journey began. With a message, and with that feeling that stayed with us after watching him play, after seeing the magic he kept bringing to the pitch.

The weeks went by, the project took shape, and we finally launched it. The Last Tango was out in the world. And my biggest dream was still for Leo to see it.

A few weeks ago, we closed the fastest deal in our history. From our first meeting to sending the proposal and getting the green light to work together, it all happened incredibly quickly.

By one of those twists of fate, Leo is part of that company. A brand that makes one of Argentina’s most delicious dishes: milanesas, our much-loved breaded cutlets. We’ll tell you more soon.

In our very first conversation, we found we had a few things in common. Besides a love of milanesas (obviously), we shared a passion and love for Messi. So we showed them what we’d made, surprised by the coincidence of having more in common than we’d expected.

They loved it. One thing led to another, and the possibility came up of them sharing it. For us, the best thing that could happen to that project was for it to get a little closer to Lionel. (Almost like a rebound bouncing into our path in the box.)

We’d made it because we love him, because we wanted to give him something. And here were people who were just as excited about that idea.

They told us they were going to post it on the day of his last match with the national team. They were also very clear: he’d probably see it, but any reaction would be entirely up to him. He might enjoy it, he might leave a like, or he might just scroll past.

For us, just imagining that he would see it was enough.

We’re talking about someone who’s been part of our lives for more than twenty years (and always will be). Generations of us grew up watching him. Some started watching his matches with their parents and ended up watching them with their own children.

Someone who made us proud to have the best player in the world. Who helped us believe again after every setback. Who gave us reasons to hug people who, just a second earlier, had been complete strangers.

I think about those hugs. About throwing our arms around whoever was next to us after a goal. About all the times he brought us a little closer to our people.

And now we were being told that this person might see something we’d made to thank him. We were already overwhelmed.

Yesterday, around noon, notifications started pouring in from one of our Slack channels. The team was letting us know that the reel had been posted. A few seconds later, when I don’t think it even had fifty likes yet, his appeared.

Yes. Messi’s.

It’s hard to explain everything I felt.

The world stands still when he’s about to kick a ball. And we’d made that project because of everything we’d felt while that ball was at his feet.

For him to come across that gift some time later, on such a special day, and leave a little gesture of his own still feels enormous and unbelievable to me.

His like took me straight back to that Sunday morning. To the message to Mati. To the screenshot of the available domain. To those days full of meetings, projects and a thousand things on our minds, when we found a little space to enjoy making something we loved.

No brief. No one asking us to do it. Just the freedom to imagine what we’d like to give him, and the desire to make it as good as we possibly could.

How do you build a strategy for something like this to happen?

Today, connecting the dots, I can tell you how one thing led to another. But this story only makes sense looking back.

Looking ahead, on that Sunday, there was love. There was excitement. There was an idea that made us happy, and a team eager to bring it to life.

As if by magic, people appeared who felt something similar. Conversations brought us closer. And an opportunity came along that we couldn’t even have imagined.

At this point, I don’t know whether that belongs in the realm of the mystical, the magical, or the things that were simply meant to happen. Part of me also likes to think that all the heart we put into it found its own way.

And that’s what stays with me: what can happen when we make room to do something simply because we want to. Because it moves us. Because it means something to us, even if we don’t yet know where it will lead.

In a world where we so often calculate what we’ll get in return, I think there’s something beautiful about this story beginning with the desire to give something away.

For more than twenty years, we’ve been lucky enough to do what we love. And we can still feel this moved by it.

Thank you, Leo.

Thank you for all those moments.

And for this one, which has nothing to do with football and everything to do with football.