"Girls, it's Messi — I mean, it's no big deal." Six words. That's all it took for Victoria Granatto to turn a World Cup celebration into a national controversy.
Las Leonas had just won the Women's Hockey World Cup in Amsterdam — their third title, after 2002 and 2010 — and Lionel Messi had sent the team a personal congratulatory message. When asked about it in an interview, Vicky's response wasn't exactly effusive. She seemed almost irritated that her teammates were more animated about a footballer's shout-out than their own historic victory. Her point — that hockey legends like Luciana Aymar, Mercedes Margalot, and Cecilia Rognoni deserve that energy — wasn't wrong. The delivery, though, landed like a grenade.
The backlash was swift and suffocating. Her Instagram went private under the weight of it.
Majo steps in to protect the team
Las Leonas captain and Vicky's sister, María José "Majo" Granatto, moved quickly to contain the damage. Her Instagram story was direct and clearly heartfelt: "As a person, an Argentine, and an athlete, I deeply admire you, and I always have." She went further, calling Messi someone who "was, is, and will remain an example" for her and the squad. "There is no one like you. Always Messi. Thank you for everything."
It was a necessary intervention. Whether or not Vicky intended any slight, the optics in Argentina right now couldn't be worse for anyone perceived as diminishing Messi. He just led the national team to the 2026 World Cup final at thirty-nine years old — a campaign that ended in a loss to Spain — and announced his international retirement shortly after. The country is still raw.
This isn't the first time an Argentine athlete has walked into this particular fire. During the FIFA Women's World Cup, forward Yamila Rodríguez was pilloried simply for having a Cristiano Ronaldo tattoo on her leg. She ended up delivering a public apology to explain that admiring another player doesn't equal disrespecting Messi. That she needed to apologize for a tattoo tells you everything about the temperature of this debate in Argentina.
A legitimate point, lost in the noise
Here's the frustrating part: Vicky wasn't wrong about hockey's legacy. Argentina's women's hockey program is one of the most decorated in world sport, and the pioneers she referenced genuinely shaped that history. Her argument had merit. It just had catastrophically bad timing.
Majo's statement has done enough to separate the team from her sister's comments publicly. Whether the squad carries any of this friction into their next campaign is another question. World Cup winners shouldn't be spending the week after their victory managing a PR crisis — but in Argentina, in the weeks after Messi's international farewell, no one gets to be indifferent about him. Not even his biggest fans in other sports.
