Meet Antonela Roccuzzo, Lionel Messi’s wife

Lionel Messi at Paris Saint-Germain: the news came just like a bomb! accompanied by his wife, Antonela Roccuzzo, and their three children, the Argentine footballer just landed in Paris.

"A historic move". This is how the football world describes the recent move Lionel Messi made from his lifelong club Barcelona to Paris Saint Germain, the French club. And Messi did not arrive on his own to Paris. This decision obviously change the life of his family too.  

This is not the first time that 33-year-old Antonela Roccuzzo leaves everything to follow her husband. Their story began when they were little children. Messi had 9 years old, she had 8, they meet in Rosario, in the east of the country, the city where they both grew up. After having crossed paths on numerous occasions, forged friendships over the years and then having maintained an epistolary relationship when Lionel Messi joined Catalonia at just 13 years old, they finally reunited in 2009. After only a year of relationship and engagement all fresh, Antonela Roccuzzo joined the footballer in 2010 in Spain, where the latter made his debut at FC Barcelona. They got married on June 30, in 2017 in Rosario, the city where it all began.

Leaving everything behind “for him”
If, for Lionel, a beautiful destiny emerges in the world of football, Antonela sees her own career plans totally turned upside down and complicated. Leaving Argentina, she left a potential future in modeling but also the dietetics studies she was pursuing at the University of Rosario. While Argentina is now devoted to their three children - Thiago, 9, Mateo 5 and Circo, 3 -. She owned a shoe store in central Barcelona for a while, but she shut it down  after two years as things did not work well for her.

But don’t worry, according to Forbes, the footballer's personal fortune exceeds one billion dollars, which places him among the highest paid sportsmen in the world, behind Neymar. His salary at PSG is estimated at 35 million euros.