Paraguayan Artist Lili Cantero Creates a One-of-a-Kind Artwork for Lionel Messi
By Drafted Team
Lili Cantero has found her own place in fútbol with a paintbrush. The Paraguayan artist turns boots, balls, and jerseys into canvases, telling the stories of the people behind the game. Her latest work takes on one of its most recognizable figures: Lionel Messi. Commissioned by CONMEBOL, the piece celebrates his journey with Argentina and is now in his hands.
Born in Asunción, Paraguay, Cantero has built an artistic practice around the intersection of fútbol and storytelling. Objects usually associated with playing the game become surfaces for remembering it: a boot can carry family photographs, a ball can hold a history, and a jersey can tell us something about the person who wears it.
Her work has reached some of the sport’s biggest names, including Messi and Ronaldinho. But the appeal goes beyond a recognizable face. Cantero brings personal details into a game often remembered through scores and trophies.
For this CONMEBOL commission, she connected the defining chapters of Messi’s Argentina story in one continuous visual narrative. It begins with his childhood and roots in Rosario, moves through his early senior national team days wearing No. 19, and follows him to the long-awaited Copa América triumph and, ultimately, becoming a World Champion.
Together, those chapters place the victories alongside everything that came before them. The child and the champion belong to the same story.
Cantero described the opportunity as particularly meaningful at this stage of her artistic practice. In sharing the finished work, she thanked Messi for inspiring generations, including artists like herself, to dream bigger.
The piece is now with the person whose life inspired it. For an artist from Paraguay who has made fútbol her canvas, that is a milestone of her own: having her interpretation of the game become part of its history.
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