Gunmen threaten Messi after firing at his wife’s family store

Gunmen threatened football legend Lionel Messi in a written message after opening fire at a supermarket owned by his wife’s family, Argentina, according to an AP report from Buenos Aires.

Police said two men on a motorcycle fired at least a dozen shots into an Unico branch in the early hours, leaving a message on cardboard that read, “Messi, we’re waiting for you. Javkin (the city’s mayor) is also a drug trafficker, so he won’t take care of you.”

Pablo Javkin is the mayor of Messi’s hometown, Rosario, where the supermarket is located, some 320 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires.

Nobody was injured in the early morning attack, and it was unclear why assailants would target Messi or the Unico supermarket.

The city’s mayor, Pablo Javkin, went to the supermarket and lashed out at federal authorities over what he called their failure to curb a surge in drug-related violence in Rosario.

Messi is widely respected in Argentina, and has a mass following which was reflected in the thousands that gathered to greet him and the football team after the country’s first World Cup victory in 36 years in Qatar in December.