Lionel Messi: When Barcelona icon's son teased him about Liverpool loss in 2019 | OneFootball

Lionel Messi was visibly crushed by Barcelona’s defeat to Liverpool in 2019.

It’s damning that the overriding theme of Messi‘s final years at Camp Nou were devastating Champions League exits with each of his last four seasons ending in exactly that manner.

The Blaugrana threw away a 4-1 lead against AS Roma, were on the receiving end of an 8-2 thrashing by Bayern Munich and were thumped 5-2 on aggregate by Paris Saint-Germain.

Liverpool 4-0 Barcelona

However, there’s no denying that the Anfield catastrophe was the worst of the bunch because it was the first moment where it became apparent that Barcelona had a sustained problem on their hands.

That, and the fact that Barcelona – unlike their final two seasons with Messi – had a feasible shot at going all the way with just 90 minutes on Merseyside between them and a clash with Tottenham Hotspur in Madrid.

But alas, we all know what happened next with Divock Origi and Georginio Wijnaldum bagging braces to break Messi’s heart with arguably the greatest Champions League comeback of all time.

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Crushing defeat for Messi and Barcelona

In fact, there’s good reason to think that Messi’s Barcelona never truly recovered from the defeat, such was the devastating blow to the club’s mentality while they were still grieving the Roma loss.

And poor old Messi couldn’t even seem to escape the crushing nature of the Liverpool defeat in his own household with the Ballon d’Or winner revealing that his son teased him about the collapse.

During a 2019 interview with TyC Sports, the Argentine icon amusingly revealed that his young son, Mateo, pretended to play as Liverpool simply because they beat him on that famous night at Anfield.

Messi teased by his own son

According to the Daily Mail‘s translation, Messi explained: “Mateo loves football, he wears all the shirts.

“But we played together at home and he told me: ‘I’m from Liverpool… they beat you’, he also did it with Valencia (after the Copa del Rey final)… ‘Valencia beat you, I’m from Valencia’.

“When we’re watching TV he will cheer (Real) Madrid’s goals to annoy his brother, he is the one who is a Madrid fan.”

Brilliant. It must bring Messi crashing back down to earth when his own son is teasing him about the Liverpool defeat through all the clamour and pangs of social media and the world media.

Banter from every angle

Nothing rams home throwing away a 3-0 defeat in the Champions League quite like banter from your own toddler even compared to global back pages and angry supporters on Twitter.

And it’s certainly amusing within the wider context of Messi’s sons with Mateo and Thiago, in particular, going viral for everything from reactions to Ballon d’Or wins to accidentally celebrating a missed chance for Barcelona.

Marry that to Messi being teased about the Liverpool capitulation and it’s the umpteenth time that his sons have produced a lovely moment that’s equally amusing and adorable.

“Ten Hag next Man Utd Manager!” (Football Terrace)