Crying Messi

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Part of a series on Lionel Messi. [View Related Entries]

About

Crying Messi is a reaction image and photoshop meme based on a photograph of Argentinian football player Lionel Messi frowning in dismay after missing his opening kick against the Chilean national football team during the penalty shoot-out at the 2016 Copa América Centenario Final.

Origin

On June 26th, 2016, the final game in the 2016 Copa América Centenario (English: Centennial Cup America) between Argentina and Chile was held at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, United States. As both teams had played each other in the final match at the previous year's tournament, which resulted in the host country Chile's first tournament victory ever, the game went by without a goal from either side and ultimately ended up in a penalty shootout. On Argentina's side, Lionel Messi, the star forward for Spain's Barcelona FC often hailed as one of the greatest football players alive, stepped up for the opening kick of the shootout; however, Messi missed his target and the ball flew high over the goal post, much to the dismay of his teammates and Argentinian football fans.

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By the end of the shootout, Chile beat Argentina by 4-2 in penalty kicks and claimed the championship title for two consecutive years. Shortly after the game ended, a glimpse of Messi trying to contain himself on the verge of tears was caught on camera.

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Spread

Beginning at around 11 p.m. (EST) on June 26th, 2016, still images, GIFs and Vine clips of Messi's teary-eyed face made their way around online football communities and Twitter. At 11:02 p.m. Twitter user @CurlsandSports tweeted an image of Messi celebrating a goal from a different game with Crying Michael Jordan photoshopped over his face (shown below, left). At 11:09 p.m., ESPN senior writer Arash Markazi tweeted a still image of Messi breaking into tears with the caption "Crying Messi Meme" (shown below, right), which garnered over 250 likes and 235 retweets in less than 24 hours.

In the following hour, a slew of photoshopped parodies and situational jokes centered around the image of Messi's crying face surfaced on Twitter across the Americas, with numerous photoshopped instances featuring cross-visual references to the Crying Michael Jordan meme.

Meanwhile, Viner Arsenal Fan USA uploaded an abridged clip of Messi crying (shown below, left), which garnered over 3.8 million loops in about 20 hours, and Viner The Cauldron uploaded an edited version of Messi's penalty kick featuring a cutout image of Crying Michael Jordan as the football, accruing more than 1.8 million loops within the first 20 hours (shown below, right).

By the next morning on June 27th, the image of Messi frowning in disappointment had been picked up by several football-centric Twitter accounts as well as sports and entertainment news sites, including Russia Today, CBS Sports, Digital Spy and Hollywood Life, among others.