The Last Tango

What Messi means to us

During the World Cup, we named a project The Last Tango before it even existed.

It was a more or less elegant way of quietly saying something none of us wanted to say too loudly: perhaps we were watching Lionel Messi’s final games for Argentina. Now we know it was also a prophecy. Messi announced that he would no longer play for Argentina, and those words we had chosen almost on instinct ended up taking on an entirely different weight.

The last tango.

The last World Cup.

The last time millions of Argentinians organized our lives around a match to watch him walk onto a pitch wearing our shirt.

The whole world knows who Messi is.

They know his goals, his records, his Ballon d’Or awards and that absurd way he has of keeping the ball glued to his foot. They watched him win everything. They applauded him in Barcelona, Paris, Miami and anywhere on the planet where someone could grasp just how extraordinary it all was.

But I think we Argentinians know something else.

We know where we were when he scored certain goals. Who we hugged. Which friend started crying. Which family member was no longer around to watch the match. Which house, which bar or which part of the world each of those moments of joy found us in.

To everyone else, Messi is possibly the greatest player in history.

For us, he is also a way of measuring time.

We grew up with him.

We watched him grow up too.

We watched him become the best in the world, fall, get back up, try again and keep choosing the same shirt in which things had so often seemed determined to go wrong for him.

Until they went right.

And how they went right.

Perhaps that is why, during this last World Cup, there was something especially moving about watching him play. He had already won everything. Settled every possible debate. Turned those frustrations into one of the greatest moments of collective joy in our history.

And there he was again.

Running.

Fighting for every ball.

Conjuring up a pass, a goal or a move from another planet.

At some point, after one of those matches, someone wrote something on our Slack that was

pretty close to what we were all thinking:

“Look at what this kid is still doing.”

Because, despite the passing years, the kid was still there.

The same kid who looks completely happy whenever there is a ball nearby. Who found his

passion very early on and had the courage, the discipline and probably the obsession too, to keep trying, always.

There is not much mystery about what drives Messi.

Playing football makes him happy.

And seeing him so happy made millions of us happy too.

The goals were his. The emotion belonged to millions.

The idea for The Last Tango began to emerge there, between the epic story building with every match and the inescapable awareness that it was approaching its end.

We felt we had to do something.

Not to explain who Messi was. Nor to sum up a career that no summary could ever contain.

Much less to add one more piece to everything that had already been made about him.

We wanted to give something back to him.

A small gesture in return for an enormous joy.

And deep down, there was an even more personal, more unlikely and more exciting question:

What if it reaches him?

What if that gift made in Argentina found its way to him, through one of those strange paths things sometimes take?

That possibility was enough.

We registered the domain and started building the project in the middle of the World Cup. We squeezed it into studio life, between deadlines, meetings and everything else that was already happening.

Argentina played.

Argentina won.

And after every match, the same message appeared:

“We keep going.”

We were still in the World Cup, and the story kept growing.

For us, it also meant something else: we had a few extra days to finish the gift.

That is how we worked for ten days. A group of friends, fans, designers, 3D artists and developers trying to give shape to a feeling that, by then, was already much bigger than ourselves.

The challenge was not just technical.

We could have gathered his latest goals, organized the videos and built a spectacular gallery.

But that would have told the story of what Messi did. We wanted to represent what Messi had made people feel.

The goals were his.

The emotion belonged to millions.

And that is when the idea that brought everything together emerged: if millions of people were happy because of him, each one of them could be represented by a point.

A point for every person who shouted.

For every person who cried in front of a screen.

For every family that hugged.

For every Argentinian who took to the streets with a flag.

For every person who, even thousands of miles away, felt for a few seconds that an entire country was breathing together.

Millions of points reconstructing his final goals for Argentina.

Because Messi never played alone.

We were there in every one of those plays too: watching, suffering, willing the ball forward from the sofa and performing all those completely ridiculous rituals that were, of course, essential to

Argentina winning.

Technology allowed us to turn that idea into an experience. We worked with particles, depth, movement and WebGL so that each goal could be explored from different angles, almost as if time had stopped just before the ball went in.

That second of silence.

The goal.

The hug.

The roar that happens at the same time in millions of homes.

Then we understood that The Last Tango was not just a tribute to Lionel Messi.

It was also a way of keeping everything we had experienced because of him.

The gift is still on its way

We finished the project, let the excitement settle a little, refined a few details and finally shared it with the world.

Some time later, it won an FWA. It brought us enormous joy and was a beautiful way to round off something we had made entirely through our own effort and enthusiasm.

But the award was never this gift’s destination.

There had always been just one destination.

Today, through a few conversations and people who came along the way, we know that The

Last Tango has reached Leo’s inner circle.

That means the original question no longer seems quite so impossible.

Maybe he will see it.

Maybe someone will show him.

Maybe, for a few minutes, he will explore one of those goals with his finger and discover that every point around him represents a person he made happy.

I would love to know.

I do not need a photo or some grand response. A like, a comment or a message from someone telling me “Yes, Leo saw it” would be enough.

For now, the gift is still on its way.

And I like to think that, at some point, it might complete that strange journey that began in a chat after a match and end up in front of the person it was made for.

Because we made an experience for millions, hoping to reach just one.

Our own way of saying thank you.

Thank you for always trying.

Thank you for coming back.

Thank you for every one of those hugs.

And thank you, above all, for making us so happy.