The Argentina captain toured the Lusail stadium with a replica of the authentic trophy, which belonged to Di María and was the one who warned him on the pitch that it was not the real one
The cup that Leo Messi lifted and walked around the Lusail stadium in Qatar after Argentina was declared world champion was false. The real one was worn by Ángel Di María. The trophy that Messi displayed on his triumphant tour of the World Cup final to star in the championship’s most iconic image was a replica of the original, belonging to an Argentine couple sitting in the stands. Messi only found out that the World Cup he was holding in his hands was an imitation until Di María told him on the pitch, but the new champion’s captain, beaming with happiness, instead of getting angry, took it with humor on.
«Di María told Leo that he had ridden the Olympic round with a trout glass. He had the real one, that’s why they laughed,” revealed the photographer of “Clarín” and “Olé” Fernando de la Orden, as reported by the newspaper “El País”. “We are the owners of the trout cup and we pass it on to the players on the field,” later revealed Paula Zuzulich, a fan of La Plata, who, together with her husband, had a replica of the real one made in Argentina, as a talisman during the World Cup dispute, and they decided to take her with them to the stadium where the final was played.
Ángel Di María himself, who faced Messi in goal at the start of the festivities, revealed the conversation he had with the ex-Barcelona as he warned the Argentina captain that the cup he held in his hands was not the official FIFA cup wash. “The security guards said to me ‘please don’t give the drink to anyone’, and I told them ‘but there’s another drink there’, and they said to me, ‘No, no, the one you have is the real one, please that we are with you”. ‘).
Inside resin and quartz
The fact is that the fake World Cup entered the Lusail stadium, stowed away in a backpack so that it would not be discovered. “After the last penalty, we took out the cup and started celebrating. At one point a relative of Paredes comes by and we shout to him that we wanted Leandro to sign the cup for us. Thus began the madness of the cup. She entered the field of play, the players grabbed her and Leo spins around with the cup,” admitted Manuel Zaro, owner of the fake trophy, to ‘Clarín’ on New Year’s Eve. Nico González and Angelito Di María to sign the contract,” he added.
«This cup has the weight of the original, it is made with resin and quartz inside and topped with a gold-like paint. We had it up and running a few months ago and the idea was that the players could sign it, that’s all. It was about 45 minutes that the cup was in the hands of one player to another, from one family member to another. They took pictures, everything was very nice, but we wanted him to come back to us. Fortunately, it came back into the hands of Lautaro Martínez,” congratulated the owner of the copied trophy.
“In the stands they said to me ‘you’ve lost the cup’. We had fun, but we wanted him back. There I yelled to some players ‘if you see the cup that Paredes has, it’s ours’, and finally Lautaro brought it. FIFA employees came and asked us to confirm that it was not the original. The anecdote is also part of the history of the world title finally won by Messi, victim of a surreal situation that has caused the outrage of Argentine fans with the family owning an imitation cup of the authentic one, who maintains the marriage residence of La Plata.
Source: La Verdad
I am Shawn Partain, a journalist and content creator working for the Today Times Live. I specialize in sports journalism, writing articles that cover major sporting events and news stories. With a passion for storytelling and an eye for detail, I strive to be accurate and insightful in my work.
