Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi traded his soccer kit for jorts and it’s got some Gabonese political officials up in arms — and not just because the jorts in question look like they got into a fight with a bottle of bleach and a sandblaster and lost. Opposition party officials are upset about where the Barcelona striker chose to wear the denim shorts — to meet President Ali Bongo Ondimba while touring the construction site of a new soccer stadium in the country.

“The messiah of football arrived in Gabon like he were going to a zoo: dirty, unshaven and his hands in his pockets, looking for peanuts to throw to them!” the Union du Peuple Gabonais (UPG) party said in a statement this week. “When you’re named Lionel Messi and you’re a multi-billionaire, you don’t have the right to present yourself to officials of a republic, even a banana one, with your hands in the pockets of a ripped, tattered pair of shorts.”

It continues: “Gabon isn’t a zoo. We don’t know what the Argentine came to Gabon for, but we at least have the right to denounce his negligence and his lack of respect for standards and principles. We are uneasy with Messi’s attitude and his attire. Only for these reasons, linked to respect for the host country, do we condemn the footballer’s indelicateness, to say the least!”

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Messi, who is capable of cleaning up well, may not have had a good excuse to wear jorts to meet the president of a country, but he did have a good excuse for being in Gabon. Or at least his wallet did.

Ondimba reportedly paid Messi $4 million to make the trip, during which he laid the first brick of the Port-Gentil Stadium’s foundation, according to NBC Sports, which quoted French reports.

Ondima called the claims untrue on Wednesday, however, saying Messi visited the African nation free of charge.

“The Republic of Gabon strongly denies having transferred or having promised to transfer any sum of money to the Argentine international football player Lionel Messi,” Gabon’s British embassy told the Guardian.

“When I was in Barcelona a few years ago, I met Messi who had told me that he would come to visit me in [Gabon’s capital] Libreville,” Ondimba said (via the Guardian). “It’s a promise he made me. He is a man of honor who just kept his word.”

Whatever the case, at least Ondimba seems cool with the jorts.

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