Before becoming the emblem of Argentine soccer and one of the most renowned athletes in history, Lionel Messi was the descendant of a narrative that was shared by millions of Italian-Argentine families: the emigration from Italy to South America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His roots are in the Marche region of central Italy, where some of his direct ancestors left. On his paternal side, his great-great-grandfather Angelo Messi departed Recanati, Italy, the birthplace of poet Giacomo Leopardi, in 1893 to live in Rosario with his wife Maria. A few years later, in 1899, his maternal great-great-grandfather Raniero Coccettini emigrated from nearby San Severino Marche. A portion of the family still resides in the area, maintaining ties to the Argentine champion's ancestral homeland. Prior to Messi's Spanish citizenship, his family explored seeking Italian citizenship, which is granted to descendants of Italian emigrants in numerous nations. Recanati has made several attempts to deepen this friendship throughout the years. In 2019, after constantly urging the Argentine star to visit his ancestral hometown, the municipality even gave him his electoral certificate for the local elections, formally recognizing him as an Italian citizen living abroad. The Messi surname is also well-known in Italian sports history. The Argentine champion is a distant relative of Luca Messi, a former professional boxer born in Bergamo to a family with roots in Recanati. Luca Messi, the Italian welterweight champion in 2002, visited Lionel in Milan in 2012 for a commercial event, where the two were pictured wearing boxing gloves. Music is one of his loves, and as a young man, he came across Eros Ramazzotti, a musician who is well-known in Latin America due to several Spanish adaptations of his songs. In 2016, the Italian singer paid a visit to Barcelona's training complex, and the Argentine star expressed his excitement on social media about meeting "one of his idols".