Brad Stuver wasn't the only person to stop a Lionel Messi shot on Saturday night.
But for Alex Rubio, stopping the legend wasn't exactly cause for celebration.
During warmups, an errant Messi shot flew through the air, past the goal and toward the throng of assembled photographers between the supporters' section and the endline, smashing into the hood of Rubio's camera. When the Verde All Day photographer resumed shooting, he found the camera was failing and had to switch to a backup camera.
If these are indeed the last shots he got with his trusty Olympus (and we've launched a fundraiser to help him replace it), they document quite a moment.
Lionel Messi taking out Alex Rubio's camera, frame-by-frame (Alex Rubio/Cinco Soles Media)
(Alex maintains that in shots four and five, Messi realizes what he's done. In shot six, the ball has made contact.)
Though it took sacrificing a very expensive camera to arrive at it, Alex now has a Story to Tell in a trip that brought an official, supporters'-group-engineered 265 Verde fans to Miami — plus dozens more who found their own way into their own purchased seats opting for green over pink — looking for their own Stories to Tell.
