Ankara Messi meaning: the line is Catalan, and the word is Encara

“Ankara Messi” is one of the most replayed pieces of football commentary ever recorded, and nearly every version of it online gets the words wrong. The commentator never said Ankara. He said Encara, and he said it in Catalan.

Here is what the line actually means, who said it, and the goal that produced it — a 19-year-old Lionel Messi setting off from near the halfway line at the Camp Nou in April 2007.

What does ‘Ankara Messi’ mean?

‘Ankara Messi’ is a mishearing of ‘Encara Messi’, which is Catalan for ‘Still Messi’. The commentator kept repeating it as Messi carried the ball past one Getafe player after another — still Messi, still Messi, still Messi — because the ball would not leave his feet.

The full call, delivered by Joaquim Maria Puyal on Catalunya Radio, ran like this:

“Messi. Messi. Messi. Immens Messi. Encara Messi. Encara Messi. ENCARA MESSI… Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol.”

Said fast and at volume, “Encara” lands on most non-Catalan ears as “Ankara”. Once the clip began circulating with that spelling in the captions, the name of the Turkish capital was attached to it for good. The line has nothing to do with Ankara.

Why the line is Catalan, not Spanish

A lot of pages will tell you the word is Spanish. It is not, and the distinction matters, because the Spanish reading does not mean what the line needs it to mean.

Language	Word	What it means
Catalan	Encara	Still, yet
Spanish	Todavia, aun	Still, yet
Spanish	Encara (from encarar)	Faces, confronts

So “Encara Messi” in Catalan is “Still Messi”. Read as Spanish, the same spelling would be closer to “Messi faces up” — which is not what Puyal was saying, and not what makes the clip work.

It is in Catalan because of the man holding the microphone. Joaquim Maria Puyal is the pioneer of Catalan-language football broadcasting. On 5 September 1976 he called the first live football match in Catalan since the Second Republic, having sat down with linguists beforehand to build a football vocabulary in the language more or less from scratch. He was at Radio Barcelona from 1967, moved to Catalunya Radio in 1985, and commentated on more than 2,000 Barcelona matches. The most famous call of a fifty-year career is two words long.

The goal behind the commentary

18 April 2007, Camp Nou, Copa del Rey semi-final first leg. Barcelona beat Getafe 5-2, and just before the half-hour Messi picked the ball up near the halfway line on the right. He was 19, in his third season in the first team, and not yet the player the whole side was built around.

He beat four Getafe players on the run — some counts put it at five — carried on towards the byline, went round goalkeeper Luis Garcia and rolled the ball into an empty net. It took about ten seconds, and it was compared to Diego Maradona’s second goal against England at the 1986 World Cup before the celebrations had finished. The starting position, the direction of travel and roughly the number of players beaten were all the same.

Date	18 April 2007
Competition	Copa del Rey, semi-final first leg
Venue	Camp Nou, Barcelona
Result	Barcelona 5-2 Getafe
The goal	Messi, 28th minute
Messi’s age	19
Commentary	Joaquim Maria Puyal, Catalunya Radio

In March 2019 Barcelona put 64 goals from the club’s history to a public vote. Around 500,000 people took part, and this is the one that won. Messi took second and third place as well, with his goals against Atletico Madrid in 2014-15 and against Real Madrid in 2010-11.

What happened next is the part nobody mentions

Barcelona did not win the cup that year. They did not reach the final. Getafe won the second leg at home 4-0 on 10 May 2007 to go through 6-5 on aggregate, one of the great Copa del Rey comebacks, and reached the first final in their history. Sevilla beat them 1-0 there through a Frederic Kanoute goal at the Santiago Bernabeu on 23 June.

So the goal Barcelona’s own supporters voted the best in the club’s history came in a tie Barcelona lost. It is worth knowing before you share the clip.

When does ‘Ankara Messi’ come back?

Every time Messi does something that looks like 2007. The biggest revival came at the 2022 World Cup semi-final, when Argentina beat Croatia 3-0 and Messi took Josko Gvardiol — one of the most highly rated young defenders in the world at the time — on a long run down the right before squaring for Julian Alvarez to finish. Argentina went on to win the tournament, and the old Catalan commentary was dubbed over the clip within hours.

He has kept handing people reasons to reach for it. He joined Inter Miami in 2023 and won the Copa America in 2024. At the 2026 World Cup, his sixth, he became the competition’s all-time leading scorer, passing Miroslav Klose’s men’s record of 16 and finishing his career on 21 World Cup goals. Eight of them came in that tournament alone, at 39. Argentina lost the final 1-0 to Spain, and by then most people had accepted it was probably his last World Cup.

The Barcelona years are still where the meme lives, though. If you want the numbers behind that era, our El Clasico head-to-head record has Messi as the fixture’s all-time leading scorer, and the wider GOAT of football debate covers where he sits alongside Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ankara Messi: quick answers

Is it ‘Ankara Messi’ or ‘Encara Messi’?
Encara Messi. Ankara is a mishearing that stuck.

What language is it in?
Catalan. Not Spanish.

What does it translate to?
“Still Messi”, as in the ball is still at his feet.

Who said it?
Joaquim Maria Puyal, commentating for Catalunya Radio.

Which match was it?
Barcelona 5-2 Getafe, Copa del Rey semi-final first leg, 18 April 2007 at the Camp Nou.

Did Barcelona win the tie?
No. Getafe won the second leg 4-0 and went through 6-5 on aggregate.

Photo credit: Alamy