Every book has a target audience. For sports books, it’s always a question as to what ‘fandoms’ the book will appeal to, what’s the Venn diagram of people who would like this. Do you have to follow the sport? Do you have to be a fan of that team? Would a non-sports fan enjoy it?
About half-way through reading Lionel Messi and the Art of Living, I realised that, for this book, the target audience is me. I love Messi, I’ve read plenty of philosophy, and plenty of pop social-science books. I read the book during my commutes to and from the office during the toughest week in work I’ve ever had. I read it while also in a very reflective mood having spent the weekend buying baby clothes for the first time (my wife is heavily pregnant with our first child). I’ll never be in a more receptive place for some insights into how to live and never more willing to learn than from the greatest footballer of all time.
Did I mention that I love Messi? I’ve loved him from the first time I saw him play. I sound like one of the 5 million Liverpool fans who claim to have been in Istanbul but I was boring enough to have watched almost all of the U20 World Cup in 2005 when he first emerged. My brother’s childhood sweetheart had just broken his heart the day we both finished undergrad and, being freshly graduated and jobless, I spent 6 weeks trying to cheer him up with a diet of rented movies and sport on TV. I probably don’t love Messi as much as my friend who has ‘Messi 10’ tattooed on his arse, but for me, he is the footballer that defines the last 10 plus years of my enjoyment of the game.
Returning to the book, it is very hard to categorise. It’s part biography, part philosophy, part self-help book, part Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In some ways it could be read as the foundational book for the Church of Messi – a New Testament built around our one true saviour (from the evils of CR7). But that may just be by me.
A more balanced, less emotional, review it’s that the book is an interesting approach to examining the factors that breed success in life – by whatever metric you judge that. West seeks to examine Messi’s football career as a potential guide for how to live – he explores the characteristics which Messi displays and are essential to his success and, by analogy, to success in life in general.
West took the approach of interviewing just 7 people – some in football, some who knew Messi and others with interesting things to say. Each chapter interweaves these interviews with a study of how Messi demonstrated one of the key characteristics needed to be successful. The format works really well, the writing is very readable and it’s a book you could easily dip in and out of.
If you want a flavour of what the book is about, West has a great twitter thread (@andywest01) that gives a summary of each chapter. If you like the sound it from that summary, you’ll love the book. While I think the overall approach of the book might alienate some readers looking for something more traditional, West has gone for something different and he executes his vision brilliantly.
In summary, I loved it. You might not like it quite as much but you should definitely give it a shot.
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