Police and safety conflict with followers after Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi left Vivekananda Yuva Bharati Krirangan in Kolkata, India, on December 13, 2025. — Reuters
Messi is in India as a part of a tour throughout which he’s scheduled to attend live shows, youth soccer clinics, a Padel match, and launch charitable initiatives at occasions in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi.
Based on studies in Indian media, the 2022 World Cup winner walked across the pitch on the stadium waving to the followers, however was carefully surrounded by a big group of individuals and left 20 minutes after arrival.
Video from ANI confirmed followers throwing ripped-up stadium seats and different objects onto the sector and the athletics monitor on the website, with a number of individuals who had climbed over a fence surrounding the taking part in subject hurling objects.
The organisers of Messi’s tour of India didn’t instantly reply to a request for a remark.
Kolkata is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, which, together with the states of Kerala and Goa, has lengthy had massive soccer followings in an in any other case cricket-crazed nation.
Argentine soccer nice Diego Maradona twice visited Kolkata and, in 2017, unveiled a statue of himself holding the World Cup, within the presence of 1000’s of followers.
Messi, who performed a pleasant match on the Salt Lake stadium in 2011 through which Argentina defeated Venezuela 1-0, nearly unveiled a 70-foot statue of himself within the metropolis earlier on Saturday.
(1 Indian rupee = 1.1 US cents)
