"I always needed my father's approval." For Lionel Messi, those words have turned into the hardest of realities. Jorge Messi has died at the age of 68 in Rosario, the Argentinian city where he was born, after a long illness. For decades he was the architect of his son's career and the steady presence behind every step of it, the man whose risky decision to take a small boy to Barcelona changed the course of football history. Silence has fallen. An era is over. The man who gave the world Lionel Messi has passed away.
