There was a 70-foot Messi in Kolkata. It came down on June 1, dismantled after authorities ruled it unsafe, swaying too much in the wind to be trusted standing. A few weeks later, in a Patagonian oil town in Argentina, a taller one went up in its place.
Aldo Beroisa’s sculpture stands 85 feet in Cutral Co, unveiled on June 16 to mark Argentina’s World Cup opener. It depicts Messi on his knees at Lusail Stadium, the moment after Argentina’s shootout win in the 2022 final, one hand clutching the national jersey, the other pointing to the sky in the gesture he makes for his late grandmother. Beroisa, 61, has built giant dinosaurs before, and monuments to Argentina’s independence heroes. Nothing he had made had drawn this kind of attention.
He was asked about Kolkata’s statue, and its reception, before his own went up. “I believe every artist has the full freedom to express themselves through their work. Every perspective deserves respect,” he told The Indian Express.
“Messi is deeply admired and loved in India,” he adds. “As Argentines, we feel immense pride and gratitude that a figure from our country inspires such affection and admiration in such a distant place.”
Cutral Co sits in the Patagonian steppe, the eighth-largest desert on the planet, boxed in by the Andes on one side and the Atlantic’s dying moisture on the other.
“Access to water is a challenge,” Beroisa says. “Carrying out a work of this magnitude under such conditions made the project even more meaningful.”
The Sports Secretary of the Cutral Co Municipality gave him 18 months to design and build it. The statue eventually used around 70 tons of steel, along with rebar and three-grade concrete mortar.
“Approximately 110 structural tubes were employed, enabling the creation of a large-scale, highly durable work,” Beroisa says.
Most of the eighteen months went into the face. “The face was undoubtedly the most complex part of the process,” Beroisa says. “For months, I studied videos and photographs from various angles to capture a likeness that truly reflected his essence.”
The dimensions alone explain why. “The subject is a contemporary figure of immense global significance; capturing a true likeness carries a heavy responsibility,” he says. “Messi’s head stands 4.30 meters tall and weighs approximately four tons. I dedicated nearly three months exclusively to its creation, striving for the highest possible level of detail.”
“From the start, I was aware of the project’s magnitude and the challenge it posed,” he says. “Without a doubt, I consider it a very important work.”
Asked why he took the commission at all, his answer was: “Lionel Messi, a man who, through his humility, hard work and dedication, gave us one of the greatest moments of joy in our country’s history.”
The desert had the final say in the design. Gusts here run 60 to 80 kmph on an ordinary day and touch 150 in a bad one. Beroisa’s original plan had Messi holding the trophy aloft in one hand.
“The original idea was never to place the World Cup trophy between the sculpture’s legs,” Beroisa says. “The design called for it to be held in one of the hands. However, during the project’s development, engineering calculations determined that doing so would be unsafe.”
At nearly four metres tall itself, the trophy in a raised hand was never going to hold against wind that strong. So it came down to where physics put it, level with Messi’s knees, and stayed there. It is the one part of the statue that draws a laugh before it draws anything else, and the reaction on social media hasn’t surprised Beroisa much.
What he wants for the statue goes past the joke and past the record. “We hope this sculpture transcends the local level and becomes a work of national significance,” he says.
The statue still needs finishing touches, though it has already outlasted its predecessor by simply staying up. In Cutral Co, that was never guaranteed. The wind saw to the trophy’s placement first, and everything else, water, steel, eighteen months of a sculptor’s attention, had to answer to the same desert before Messi could stand at all.
Aldo Beroisa's sculpture stands 85 feet in Cutral Co, unveiled on June 16 to mark Argentina's World Cup opener. (Special Arrangement) 
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