but it was left as a joke,” said Augusto Falopapas, the artist who drew the meme on the restaurant’s wall. Messi, who is known for his calm and cautious way of speaking, repented the comment, which immediately went viral. On the walls of another restaurant called Kao Bar & Grill, in the Hallandale Beach area north of Miami Beach, Messi’s meme ”¡Andá pa’ alla bobo!” “Go over there, fool!” is immortalized along with a giant drawing of the soccer star.Īngry after Argentina’s heated victory over the Netherlands in the quarterfinals of the 2022 World Cup, Messi said those words to a Dutch player who was passing by while he was being interviewed. In 2021, they renovated the restaurant in Little Haiti in northeast Miami with another mural of Messi on the same wall, this one by Chilean-American artist Claudio Picasso. His idea was to honor him and the resilience he brings, never giving up.
Álvarez and his brother Cristian had the original mural with Messi’s face painted in the restaurant in 2018, when many people criticized the soccer star for his role in the Argentine national team’s poor performance.
