"I grew up in Paraguay, and everyone tells me you cannot make a living with art. And now I'm doing this, far away from my country, representing who I am and my roots." Lili Cantero said it plainly, and it lands harder than any press release ever could.
The Paraguayan artist has built something genuinely rare in football's orbit — a body of work that connects the sport to visual art, and that connection has reached all the way to Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona, Pelé, Ronaldinho, and FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Not bad for someone who never kicked a ball professionally.
Ten balls, ten World Cup moments, one neighbourhood
Leading into the 2026 World Cup this June, Cantero is installing painted footballs across 10 businesses in Miami's Wynwood district — the warehouse-turned-gallery neighbourhood that treats almost every surface as a canvas. Each ball in the series depicts a World Cup moment. The first, unveiled last week, recreates Spain's 2010 triumph. She wore a Spain jersey to the event, aware of the irony: Spain knocked out Paraguay on the way to that title.
Her process is as analogue as it gets. A tablet propped to her left showing David Villa celebrating a 2010 goal. Her right hand working in small, deliberate strokes. Some balls take days. Others take a couple of hours. She was doing it live at the unveiling, oblivious to the crowd watching over her shoulder.
The project sits at a natural intersection — Miami is a World Cup host city, Wynwood is its creative engine, and Messi's arrival at Inter Miami accelerated the sport's growth in a city not historically defined by football. As David Lombardi, chairman of the Wynwood Business Improvement District, put it at the first unveiling: "It's vibrant, it's changing, it's alive." Tens of thousands of World Cup visitors will pass through South Florida. Wynwood is making sure they know where to go.
How Messi helped make this happen
Cantero's breakthrough came in 2018 when she designed a pair of cleats covered in images of Messi and his family. They were sent to him. He posed with them. The photo went viral. Suddenly she wasn't just an artist who loved football — she was the artist the football world had decided to embrace.
That moment opened doors that a decade of work alone might not have. Maradona knew her name. So did Pelé. Jordi Alba — Messi's former Barcelona and Inter Miami teammate — is among her admirers. The list keeps growing.
Her take on the sport goes beyond fandom. "Art and football have the power to change the world," she said. "It changed my life." She points to kids in favelas for whom football is the only visible path forward — and calls that art in itself. It's a stretch philosophically, but the sincerity behind it isn't.
For a city that will be under the global football spotlight in just a few months, Cantero's Wynwood project is a smart piece of cultural staging. The balls will be there long enough to matter before the tournament kicks off. And the woman painting them already has the game's biggest names paying attention.
