Lionel Messi gets overwhelming welcome in China for match on Xi’s birthday
The Argentinian soccer superstar was greeted with roaring adulation when he touched down in Beijing on Saturday. Messi and his national team will play a friendly match against Australia on Xi Jinping's 70th birthday.
Hordes of fans clamored to get a glimpse of soccer superstar Lionel Messi as he arrived in Beijing on Saturday for a friendly match between Argentina and Australia later this week. This is Messi’s seventh trip to China, after his last visit in 2017 with his former club Barcelona.
Argentina will play a non-competitive match — known in the industry as a “friendly” — against Australia on June 15 at Beijing’s newly renovated 68,000-capacity Workers’ Stadium, organized by the International Football Invitation. The clash will be a rematch of the Round of 16 at the World Cup, where Argentina won 2–1 against Australia. June 15 is the 70th birthday of Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平, whose love for soccer is well known. Xi might not be able to realize his dream of China winning the World Cup, but someone in the Chinese sports establishment is making sure that Xi will get a 70th birthday party that he will enjoy.
Messi, the 35-year-old Argentine footballer is considered to be one of the sport’s GOATs (greatest of all time). On June 10, he descended from his private jet wearing a light denim ensemble and white T-shirt — colors reminiscent of the blue-and-white striped jersey he wore for the Argentina national football team when he helped clinch the 2022 FIFA World Cup championship in Qatar last November.
“Messi! Messi!” chanted several hundred fans who were waiting for him at the airport, many wearing replicas of the Albiceleste’s No. 10 jersey to celebrate his arrival. Crowds of spectators had queued up for hours at the airport and around the Four Seasons Hotel Beijing, where Argentina’s national team was due to stay. Messi smiled and waved to fans from his team’s shuttle on his way to the hotel, drawing cheers from the crowd. (See videos from social media 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.)
Messi was unexpectedly held up by a “passport issue” for a few hours at the Beijing airport. A citizen of both Spain and Argentina, Messi forgot to bring his Argentine passport to China, according to state-run nationalist tabloid Global Times. The team’s visa was only good for Argentine passports, but the issue was resolved after customs authorities granted him an expedited visa to enter the country.
Argentina will play a non-competitive match — known in the industry as a “friendly” — against Australia on June 15 at Beijing’s newly renovated 68,000-capacity Workers’ Stadium, organized by the International Football Invitation. The clash will be a rematch of the Round of 16 at the World Cup, where Argentina won 2–1 against Australia.
Tickets for the friendly sold out within 20 minutes, despite costing up to $4,800 yuan ($670) on the official site, with resale sites and hawkers selling tickets for multiple times their face value. The match comes as a rare opportunity for Chinese fans to watch the Argentina captain play in person, after they were relegated to watching last year’s World Cup from their homes or hotel rooms due to travel restrictions from Beijing’s now-axed COVID-zero policy.
One die-hard Messi fan spent 10,000 yuan ($1,400) booking rooms at four of Beijing’s luxury hotels at random, just for a chance to meet his icon, according to the Global Times.
The Argentina team trained today at the Beijing Olympic Stadium. A pre-match training for Team Argentina originally scheduled to be held at the National Olympic Sports Center on Sunday evening was canceled because the team was “unable to leave the hotel” due to the number of fans. On June 11, state-run broadcaster CCTV posted on Weibo that plans for Messi to meet fans in person had been canceled. Instead, the meeting will be held on Taobao Live on June 14, where Messi will be able to interact with fans live online.
Meanwhile, Beijing police have warned fans to avoid scams, after an ad went viral on Weibo that falsely claimed to offer a dinner with Messi for 300,000 yuan ($42,000) per person. Beijing’s public security bureau debunked the fake ad on its official Weibo account, while joking that “if you can be scammed of 300,000 yuan, then our police will raise a glass to you.”
Messi confirmed this week he will leave French champion Paris Saint-Germain to pursue a career with the U.S. Major League Soccer Inter Miami as a free agent.
