I, like Arsenal, chased Lionel Messi all day without success

Isn’t it funny how often, a seemingly innocuous trigger like the distinctive scent of drying paint will, without warning, jerk you back to a certain time and place.

The first well-worn bars of an old, familiar song half heard above the bustle in a busy high-street shop sends memories tumbling uninvited into your head. A stranger’s turn of phrase brings to mind an old friend. Whatever.

For me it’s Neil Delamere’s voice. I once sat in a college canteen (in fact, I sat in a few, and for longer than I should have, kids) watching a lunch-time performance by the midlands comedian and voice of the Lotto ads.

Predictably, he tried to engage with an obviously drunk female student who was swaying over her £3 dinner special. It went like this:
Neil Delamere: what’s your name?
Girl: music.
Delamere: how long before you graduate?
Girl: music teaching.

Now every time I hear a commercial for a Euromillions rollover jackpot, I can feel the mushy peas snorting out my nose once again as I laugh.

Sitting in front of the telly, like everyone else on Tuesday night, watching Arsenal defender after Arsenal defender chase Barcelona’s little number 10, as if the end credits were rolling on the Benny Hill Show, I was transported back to another place and time: the postcard perfect fishing town of Kinsale in the county of Cork. The time? Less than six months or so ago.

While the gorgeous hamlet is renowned for its sophisticated epicurean sensibility and watercolour scenery, for two or three days last winter, and without its knowledge, a little bit of the Buenos Aires street met the salty air. Believe it or not, Leo Messi was in town – and I chased him for two days as unsuccessfully as Arsene Wenger’s boys.

We here in the Irish Examiner learned, later in the week, that after Barcelona were shocked (2-1) by Russian minnows Rubin Karzan in the Champions League group stage on a Tuesday night, the Catalan club chiefs shipped their most valuable asset off on a late flight to this island.

He was then, surreptitiously, we were told, brought to Kinsale by private car. Imagine all those kids tucked up in bed dreaming of Messi’s footwork, and he’s wrapped in the backseat of a cab gazing out at the lights from their quiet homesteads. Santa’s on the roof; and it’s only October.

Due, we understood, to some personal issue (a family bereavement, I think) the Nou Camp bosses decided that the Argentina no 10 could well afford to skip training for the rest of the week. With the help of an Irish sports psychologist – who has oiled the cogs in the minds of many of our own sports stars – he was to get his head right and chill out in Kinsale. Well, if was good enough for Keith Floyd, right?

I was promised 10 minutes with the little dude. Be in Kinsale and have your phone on, I was told. So sipping coffee in the bar of Acton’s hotel with staff photographer Denis Minihane we sat like double agents behind the iron curtain waiting for the code. Instead we waited. (And had another cup of scald and possibly a scone. In fact, I can’t remember what I claimed expenses for, so let’s say I ate lunch as well).

After his four-goal, one-man show against the Gunners, the Catalan daily Sport labelled him “football’s Picasso”. He certainly knows how to draw something out. We sat there for the morning and ultimately our middleman was informed by text that today was not, in fact, to be the day Leo met the De Paper, but come back tomorrow.

But like the Skibbereen Eagle, whose ink has not stained any fingertips for many a year but which once famously warned the Kaiser that it was keeping ‘a beady eye on him’ before the outbreak of World War I, so too the Irish Examiner returned the following morning, to watch over the young king.

It was a Friday morning and I sat with my feet dangling above the water waiting for the call before deciding to stake out his hotel. After chatting to staff and wandering around a bit, still staring at my phone like a teenager at Mass, I was ready to throw in the towel and head to the airport to intercept the flight we suspected he’d be on.

When I saw someone in adidas gear drive an impressive car from the gym in the direction of the separate chalets, I thought I might have found my quarry. He didn’t emerge however and I repaired for the airport. He never showed there either.

Like the final scene in The Commitments, when elusive soul legend Wilson Pickett pulls up in a limo, rolls down the window and asks a passer-by for band manager Jimmy Rabbitte, I like to think that just as I spun off he ran outside, football under his arm, looked up and down the road for me – as promised – and shrugged in disappointment when he saw me scream away.

Never mind; perhaps he thinks of me every time he smells the sea air.

Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This columns first appeared in the print version of the Irish Examiner