Chellanam, a village near Kochi, celebrates Messi with 25-foot cutout ahead of the FIFA World Cup

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A 25-foot cut-out of Argentine football legend Lionel Messi at Chellanam | Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT

Have you seen the viral photograph of the 25-foot cutout of Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi put up by fans at Chellanam, in Kochi? Placing a cutout of Messi is now something of a FIFA World Cup tradition at Chellanam. “Every season (World Cup) Messi cutouts come up without fail and these are built from scratch by local fans,” says Thomas Mayjo, an All Indian Football Federation certified coach and Chellanam native.

Although football fans across Kerala have been putting up cutouts of their favourite players, this one at Chellanam has garnered the most attention.

Way back in 2018, a 35-foot high cutout of the Argentinian star by another Chellanam-based club, Argentina Fans Chellanam got a football autographed by their hero. This video was uploaded on Messi’s website, which caught his team’s attention and the rest is the stuff of dreams.

This year the cutout is a modest 25 feet high, and has been put up by the young members of the City Bazaar Football Club. “The boys put in a lot of effort to get this cutout ‘up’. From ideation to execution it was the work of almost a month,” says Mayjo, who was also the goalkeeper of the Indian team at the 2019 Homeless World Cup and an employee of Project Venda, by the Fourth Wave Foundation. Usually by the time the World Cup kicks off there would be cutouts in place, however this year, initially, there wasn’t much happening vis-a vis putting up these. That is when the youngsters put their heads together and decided that they would do it.

“They raised funds via donations and crowdfunding, working together as a team to put the cutout together. These boys are essentially the next generation to put it up. Every four years, there is a new group of kids — it is almost like a rite of passage!” says Mayjo. It was not all youngsters, even the older folks contributed in raising the cutout.

“The boys did all the welding and the other work securi