Argentina unveils giant Messi statue in Patagonian desert

A 26-meter statue of Lionel Messi now rises over the outskirts of Cutral Co, where workers spent 18 months turning 70 tons of steel and iron into a monument meant to face motorists along Route 22 and withstand Patagonian wind. The figure was inaugurated on June 16 during Argentina’s World Cup opener, placing the town’s most visible public project in the same moment that Messi was again defining the national team’s tournament identity.

The sculpture shows Messi kneeling with the 2022 World Cup trophy between his legs and one arm raised. It also includes the familiar gesture of pointing upward, a reference to the tribute Messi often makes to his late grandmother. Aldo Beroisa, 61, the sculptor behind the work, said the project mattered to him “not only as an artist but as an Argentine.”

Local authorities say it is the largest monument ever dedicated to Messi, and its scale is part of its point. Cutral Co is an oil-producing town in Neuquén province that has rarely drawn the same attention as Patagonia’s better-known lake-and-mountain destinations, but the statue has already pulled visitors and fresh attention to the area. The monument has become both an attraction and a claim on the national story, placing a remote town inside the orbit of Argentina’s most recognizable sports figure.

The timing has sharpened that effect. Messi broke Miroslav Klose’s all-time World Cup scoring record with 18 goals, then added two more in Argentina’s 2-0 victory over Austria. That run has kept him at the center of the country’s sporting imagination even as communities far from Buenos Aires look for ways to attach their own ambitions to his image.

Cutral Co’s monument also arrives with a warning from elsewhere. A 70-foot Messi statue in Kolkata, India, was later removed after authorities said it was unsafe because it swayed in the wind. In Patagonia, where gusts are part of daily life, Beroisa and local officials built this tribute to endure, and to turn a desert edge of Argentina into a site of national symbolism.