Inside Lionel Messi and Antonela Roccuzzo's Private Love Story

Lionel Messi Details "Difficult, Complicated Days" Ahead of World Cup 2026

Lionel Messi is known for his artistry on the soccer pitch, the pile of trophies he's amassed, for being one of the highest-paid athletes in the world and now for his record 21 World Cup goals heading into Argentina's July 15 semifinal vs. England.

But at home with wife Antonela Roccuzzo and their sons Thiago, 13, Matteo, 10, and Ciro, 8, the star forward is just Dad.

"Obviously, when I enter into my house," Messi said (translated from Spanish) in a May 2025 interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, "I try to be a normal dad, a normal husband, like anybody else, assuming the responsibilities we all have."

And "beyond everything else that happens to me, the fame, the recognition I may have outside," he stressed, "inside my house I am a very normal person...I discipline the children, I put limits, play and share with them, with my wife, and I live a very normal life."

Though, when Messi's sixth World Cup kicked off in June, he was aiming to put his more extraordinary qualities on display. And so he did, his 39th birthday June 24 sandwiched between dominant group stage victories against Austria and Jordan.

And, as always, Messi took the field of play with his family front and center in his heart, 32 years after meeting his future wife.

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The now eight-time Ballon d'Or winner was training at the youth academy run by Newell's Old Boys, a storied local club in his hometown of Rosario, about 186 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, when teammate Lucas Scaglia invited Messi to spend vacation with his family one summer. And that's when he met Scaglia's cousin Antonela.

They got along great as playmates, though neither child was aware that they'd met the One just yet. And they had miles to go.

Noticeably undersized among his peers, Messi was 10 when he was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency and a pediatric endocrinologist recommended regular hormone injections. After two years, his father's insurance coverage ran out and they were unsure where to turn next.

Fate intervened when an Argentine sports agent got ahold of a tape of the gifted 12-year-old, and he arranged an invitation to a tryout with FC Barcelona in 2000.

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images for Laureus

After the European club signed him and agreed to pay for his treatment, the rest of the Messi family—dad Jorge, mom Celia, older brothers Matias and Rodrigo, and younger sister Maria-Sol initially moved to Spain in 2001. But Celia ended up taking his siblings back to Argentina, leaving Jorge, who remains his son's agent and closest confidante to this day, to look after the teen.

Messi eventually found his footing with La Masia, Barcelona's youth academy, scoring 38 goals in 31 games in his debut season at the under-16 level, and the rest is history. But when he was just a kid, battling homesickness and trying to literally grow into his outsized talent, his heart remained in Rosario.

He flew back home in 2005, according to Argentina's Parati, after Roccuzzo's best friend had been killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver.

Both 17 at the time, their friendship ended up blossoming into a full-blown romance, according to various accounts of his fateful trip home.

"Yes, I have a girlfriend," Messi told Catalan's TV3 in 2009, per Newsweek. "She is in Argentina. The truth is that I am well and I am relaxed."

After Roccuzzo graduated from the National University of Rosario, she moved to Barcelona. And then that really was it. They've been together ever since, meaning Roccuzzo has had Messi's back since day one of his overwhelming international success—which is one of the reasons why the success never overwhelmed him.

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Messi told Marca in 2019 that he admired "everything" about his partner.

"She has many good qualities," he reflected. "How she gets by on a daily basis, her personality, she is always in a good mood and she always faces up to problems in an admirable way. She is a very intelligent person who is great in all aspects of life."

And while in European football "the double" means a club has won its league title and its country's major cup competition in the same season, the sport's de facto first couple have notched a different sort of dual victory: They've managed to keep their family life on a separate tier from Messi mania.

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Both he and Roccuzzo have shared oodles of snaps of Thiago, Matteo and Ciro, and Messi's homegrown cheering section accompanies him to tournaments around the globe, but they live privately.

In June 2012, Messi cheekily encouraged the very-true rumors that he was going to be a dad by putting the ball under his shirt after scoring during a World Cup qualifier against Ecuador.

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Becoming a father "changes you completely," Messi told El Periódico de Catalunya when Thiago was 2 months old. "If things didn't go my way before, I became withdrawn and didn't want to see or listen to anyone. Now, when I arrive home, I see my son and everything is OK."

While he played for Barcelona, the family lived in a large private compound with its own gym, theater and personal-size soccer field in the coastal town of Castelldefels. A typical day would see Messi dropping the kids off at school, training, resting at home with a cup of maté, picking up the kids, eating dinner with his family and going to sleep early.

"It's a normal, calm life," he told soccer journalist Grant Wahl for Sports Illustrated in 2016, "the kind of life we have always wanted."

And while Messi and Roccuzzo didn't rush to the altar, when they did tie the knot on June 30, 2017, in Rosario, they were surrounded by loved ones and an entire community that had shipped them with pride. It was a private affair and security was head-of-state-level tight, but, in royal wedding-level fashion, people gathered to watch the ceremony on big screens around the city.

Gabriel Rossi/LatinContent via Getty Images

Guests at what a local paper dubbed "the wedding of the century" included Shakira and then-partner Gerard Piqué, plus fellow soccer luminaries Luis Suárez and Neymar.

"He must have had offers so that his wedding, the best moment of his life, could take place where others wanted," Messi's former Newell's Old Boys coach Enrique Domínguez told CNN. "And yet he chose Rosario."

As TyC Sports Argentina commentator Ariel Senosiain told The Athletic in 2023, "After all his success, championships, pressures and failures, he's always stayed true to who he is."

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Roccuzzo, meanwhile, "knows that he's the star," Senosiain continued, "and yes, she has her own ventures and an important social media following, but if you cross paths with her, you'll realize how down-to-earth she is."

But because they can't help being a closely watched couple, with 507 million and 39.4 million Instagram followers, respectively, Messi and Roccuzzo do play ball, posting date night pics here, FOMO-inducing shots from some tropical paradise (or snowy mountains) there, many scenes of mother and sons in the stands wearing No. 10, and just as many of the family of five all together.

And by now, the Messi family has practice making a go of it in new surroundings. He remained the toast of Barcelona, but after 17 seasons he signed a two-year deal with Paris Saint-Germain in 2021. His family moved to Neuilly-Sur-Seine and he added two Ligue 1 titles and a Trophée des Champions to his haul.

In 2022, however, nothing mattered to Messi more than finally winning Argentina's first World Cup in 36 years.

He told reporters, per The Athletic, he was aware of "the anxiety within my family and the country as a whole. Particularly my wife Antonela and son Thiago, who watches all the national team games and knows all the possible match-ups, the opponents. 'When are we going?' he asks. 'When's the first game? When's the second game?' He's nervous and the truth is that it puts terrible pressure on me."

Yet inevitably one team was going to get the fairy-tale ending, and this time around it was Messi's.

Instagram

"MY CHAMPION," Roccuzzo captioned a photo of her longtime love giving the World Cup Trophy a kiss.

"A year I will never forget comes to an end," Messi wrote on Dec. 31, 2022. "The dream I always pursued was finally fulfilled. But that wouldn't be worth anything if I couldn't share it with a wonderful family, the best family anybody can have. And friends who always support me and never let me stay down every time I fell."

With his time in Paris drawing to a close in 2023, soccer watchers wondered if Messi would possibly return to Barcelona or follow Cristiano Ronaldo's lead and sign a mid-nine-figure deal to play in Saudi Arabia.

Instead, he turned the football world on its head and signed with Inter Miami in a deal worth upward of $50 million. The roster coup fulfilled a longtime goal for team co-owner David Beckham, who admittedly always pictured having the GOAT romping on the grass at what was then DRV PNK Stadium. (The club moved to newly built Nu Stadium in April.)

So, Messi and Roccuzzo packed up and moved to Florida, a shift in the global soccer order that was documented for the Apple TV+ series Messi Meets America.

They've since acquired a 10,500-square-foot waterfront mansion in Fort Lauderdale for $10.75 million, according to the Miami Herald, and got right down to business.

The humble routine, however, remained the same: "I finish training at 1 p.m., then I go home and Antonela and I have lunch," Messi shared with OLGA host Migue Granados, per Hola!. "I take a nap and we watch TV or movies."

The team was in last place when Messi arrived, but watching Inter Miami play became an A-list activity overnight, and the once-foundering club won its first MLS Cup in December.

Instagram (@leomessi)

"I came with great enthusiasm," Messi reflected in Messi Meets America. "My wife and I and our children have really been enjoying ourselves. And we've been talking about what this could mean for us."

Incidentally, he also told OLGA that he and Roccuzzo wouldn't mind having another child, adding, "We're not searching, but we'll see if a baby girl arrives." So, it could mean that, among other opportunities.

At the same time, unlimited post-retirement business potential aside, the athlete is now much closer to the end of his playing career than the beginning. Messi has built a massive compound in Rosario, his and Roccuzzo's forever-home base no matter where the road takes them, and he has said he'd like to play for Newell's—where he made a name for himself at 6 years old—before hanging up his cleats for good.

Instagram (@leomessi)

But there's been one theme running throughout, wherever he is, which Messi noted alongside a photo of him and Roccuzzo sitting with their boys on the edge of a fabulous swimming pool, legs dangling in the water, while on vacation in July 2023.

"Always like this," he wrote. "#familia."

And as Messi gears up to play in his sixth FIFA World Cup with Argentina taking on Algeria in Group J on June 16, you'll get a kick out of his delightful family photos:

(Originally published Oct. 14, 2023, at 7 a.m. PT)

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