I’ve spent the last year and a half of my life
writing the stories of the greatest football players we have ever witnessed and trust me
when I say, at times, it’s hard to put into words just how mind bending their achievements
were…. at times 15 minutes isn’t enough, sometimes not even close, with Lionel Messi that’s
exactly what happened, it’s impossible to capture the magnitude of his career in any sort of media,
you had to be there, you had to rise up from your couch every time he did the impossible, you had to
scream out his name at every perfectly timed shot from outside the box, you had to be there from
when it started, right to this very moment, where you stare at the highlights of his career and
beg the football gods for it not to end… for one more body feint, maybe 3 or 4 and a chip over the
goalkeeper at the end, one last celebration, one more time where you can look to your friends faces
who are as euphoric as you and say one final time, “wow, he’s from another world”.
As we approach that final hurrah, it’s time I try my best at telling you how one becomes
a footballing god, how one becomes Lionel Messi.
The day was the 24th of June 1987, in Rosario,
one of the biggest cities in Argentina, and a baby was born. His roots expanded far
across the Atlantic ocean, from both sides of his family he had Italian ancestors, who arrived
in Argentina following world war II, Italy was left in a state of chaos, life was getting harder
every day and in Argentina, foreigners were not only welcomed they were in great demand thanks
to a shortage of labour. So they sailed off, hoping to forget the horrors of war and move on.
But the Italians, though they made up a great part of this exodus, weren’t the only ones… Messi’s
great grandmother from his father’s side came from another place in Europe, Catalunya, as she
left it all behind, she could have never known that one day her grandson would be the region’s
biggest symbol, the new ruler of Barcelona.
Growing up in a country like Argentina back in
the late ’80s, you’d pretty much be peer pressured into loving football, they were living the grand
old days back then, Maradona was still going strong, actually, the year Messi was born just
happened to be Maradona’s highest goal-scoring season. To add assault to injury, in a good way,
Messi’s family happened to be filled with football fans, as long as he was around the other kids
in his family he pretty much had to play, and he was always among them, being the youngest of
3 brothers who all pursued football at some point and they weren’t even the only ones, two of his
cousins would become professional footballers as well, his younger cousin, Emanuel even went
on to play in the Bundesliga at one point.
At 4 years of age, Messi was playing football by
himself at a pitch near his house, where Grandoli, a small club in his town, had their training
sessions. Messi was repeatedly kicking the ball into a wall when the club’s president,
Salvador Aparicio walked by frantically. You see, the youth team had a match to play very soon and
there weren’t enough kids, so Salvador went up to Messi and told to go ask his mom if he could
play. At first, it didn’t go as planned, Messi’s mom would say “No, no, he’s no good at football,
and anyways he’s too small”.... thankfully his grandma was there and she wasted not time saying
“Come on, let him play, it won’t do him any harm” this very moment changed Messi’s life forever, had
his grandma not been there he probably would have not joined the team and had his mom not worried
so much, the president wouldn’t have said the following words “don’t worry, I’ll play him in the
right-wing, so he’ll be by the stands near you, in case something goes wrong”, little did he know
he had just defined great part of Messi’s career.
When he started playing, everyone was in shock,
he ran through the pitch as if the other kids weren’t there, it almost seemed unfair how much
better he was. When interviewed about how it was to watch him play back then, Salvador said:
“Believe me, he already did all the incredible things he does today, the only difference
was that the ball came up to his knees” “We worried about his size, he never seemed
to grow much, but we all said the same thing, we got the next Maradona in our hands”.
Everybody could see it, everybody knew, it’s like he was born with it. Even at school, teachers
had to pay extra attention during recess because kids would literally end up fighting
each other over having Messi play in their team. Wrhenever he played against other youth teams, the
kids would stay behind on the pitch to watch him put on a show, juggling the ball and all kinds
of other tricks. As you might imagine, Messi was a secret that a club like Grandoli couldn’t
keep for long. After little more than two years he was already on the move… the biggest club in
Rosario was Newell’s Old Boys, their academy had provided the Argentinian national team with more
players than any other, and naturally, Messi was a big fan, after all his first-ever birthday
gift was their jersey. As Leo played his last season at Grandoli, Maradona had begun playing
for Newell’s, and of course, Messi’s family made sure to take the kids to watch him and so by the
next year, Messi had joined the club as well.
Aged only 6, in his first-ever game for
the club, they won 6 nil, Messi scored 4, I guess he was setting the tone because this youth
team would become known as “La Maquina del ‘87”. It seemed that having a young Lionel Messi wasn’t
enough for Newell’s, this youth team contained a bunch of other youth talents. From very early
on, people realized they were incredible, any squad who faced them was utterly
demolished, with no chance whatsoever.
They would play 7-a-side until the age of 11,
by which they had been invincible for 3 whole years, never once coming close to losing.
Throughout all of this, Messi’s main influence when it came to football weren’t his brothers
or cousins or even his father, the one to show him the ropes was actually his grandma, her name
was Celia and she seems like an amazing person, she was the one who encouraged him
to play the most from the beginning. She brought him to his first training session, got
his parents to buy him his first pair of boots, and once she even convinced a coach to call
Messi up for a game. Messi loved her, I guess he still does, he once told the press that when
he was a kid he used to fight his cousins over who would get to sleepover at her house. Celia
was ahead of everyone else, she had this ritual, whenever she took Messi to practice, instead of
wishing him luck or literally anything else she would say “Remember, one day you’re gonna be
the greatest football player in the world”.
The year between the ages of 10 and 11 was
perhaps the toughest in Messi’s childhood, first of all, Celia passed
away and it took a toll on him, he has said that to this day he still thinks
about her all the time when playing football, he said there isn’t one particular thing about
her that could portray what she meant to him, you would have to know everything about her,
it wasn’t just the fact that she loved him that made her so important, it was how she showed
her love. I guess in an attempt to show his love for her in a way she would appreciate,
nowadays every time Messi scores, he points to the sky as a way of honoring her life.
This could have been enough to throw off any child, there were a lot of feelings to process,
a lot of emotions to get through, but then Messi was hit with another heavy blow. Leo had
been followed by an endocrinologist under the club’s advice for about a year now, and the
news weren’t great, Leo was diagnosed with a hormone deficit that was responsible for his
stunted growth and after a long year of testing, Messi was prescribed injections that he would
have to take daily in order to make up for it. One of the players who were part of his youth team
recalled that when Messi slept over at his house, he would always bring a box and ask to keep it
in the freezer, then in the middle of the night, he would go there and administrate the dosage
himself, though at first that other kid found it weird, he said that for Messi it was like
brushing his teeth, just another task and so soon everyone got used to it as well.
But it wasn’t the possibility of this becoming a traumatic experience for young
Leo that worried his parents the most, it was the treatment’s cost of about 1000 dollars
per month that soon their insurance would not be able to cover for. At first Newell’s agreed to
cover the costs, but eventually, an economic crisis hit Argentina and they just couldn’t get
the money. The family was scared, the consequences the lack of treatment could have on Messi’s future
were shocking, so they went looking around for a solution. It was at this point that Messi tried
out for River Plate, which was a joy for the young boy who idolized Pablo Aimar. Leo tried out for
only 20 minutes before they asked him to join, but first, he needed to get a permit from Newell’s
and that’s when things got sour as they refused to give it to him, probably scared of the possibility
of losing a prospect with his kind of talent. This upset led Messi to stay for a couple more
years with Newell’s trying their best but failing to gather up enough money for the treatment.
Still, as long as Messi kept on playing, the Machine of 87 kept on turning, winning every
tournament, defeating every opponent, they became so famous, they even went all the way across South
America to play matches in foreign countries. They were so wildly superior that one of the
recurring gags frequently told about them is that the goalkeeper got so bored
of having no involvement in the game that he would literally sit down on the penalty
spot watching the game as if he was in the stands. I could swear that only happened in cartoons.
Messi was of course the center of attention, once the coach was asked if it was true that
Messi had scored 500 goals over his time there and he smirked and replied: “500 at the very
least”, and you know what’s funny about that, one of his other coaches had made a deal with
Leo, he found out Leo loved these chocolate cookies from Argentina called alfajores and he
proposed that for every goal he scored in a match he would give him one, but at that rate he would
be the world’s first diabetic football prodigy. Maybe that’s why eventually a new deal was
proposed as a joke, the coach said he would only give Messi cookies if he scored a header. In the
very next game, Messi pretty much dribbled through the whole squad, including the goalkeeper,
got to the goal line, flicked the ball up, headed it into the goal, looked back,
smiled at him, and showed him 2 fingers.
As Messi headed towards his 13th birthday, a
man landed in Brazil, coming from Barcelona, but he was no ordinary man, his name was Carles
Rexach and from 1965 to 1981 he played 328 matches for FC Barcelona, winning the cup winner’s
cup, being La Liga’s top scorer at one point and even partnering up in attack and as the
second coach of the mythical Johan Cruyff.
Carles was now well into his retirement and
working as a scout, as he made his rounds in Brazil he got a call from an Argentinian agent
telling him he had to come and watch this kid with immense talent. The agent seemed so excited
that he began considering it, so he asked how old he was, assuming that given all the stories he
heard of the kid he would have to be at least 18 years old, I’m guessing he didn’t expect the
starboy to be only 13, his age jumped out to him, how can such a young boy be already getting grown
men so excited about his abilities? So Carles told the agent to schedule a trip to Barcelona, so
they could run the boy through some trails.
Back in Rosario, Messi’s family heard about the
news and as you might imagine they were euphoric, especially because a big club like Barcelona
could for sure help Messi with his medical bills, but there was one problem, Newell’s had already
stopped one transfer and there was some bad blood between the family and the club since they
claimed Newell’s barely sent them any of the money they promise to provide in order to help
with the costs of Messi’s treatment, so they went old school and just told the club Messi was
sick with pneumonia and wouldn’t be able to go to training for about 3 weeks, while in reality, he
would be in Barcelona, trying out for the club.
When Messi started, Carles was abroad going about
his scout duties, and though everyone was shocked at his skill, many doubted him because of
his height and were unsure if they should sign him. When Carles got back he found it all
strange so he went to watch a match by himself, he walked around the pitch once and it took him
15 minutes to go all the way around because he constantly stopped in awe of what Messi would
do on the pitch, by the time he got around to the bench he sat and told the rest of the staff:
“sign him, don’t think about twice if someone asks you can say it was my decision”. Wise man, uh?
Despite all of this, higher-ups at Barcelona pulled the plug, said the kid was
too young, that it was too risky and the club didn’t need any more mess,
considering they had just lost Luis Figo to Real Madrid and were in a really bad state financially.
Between September and December nothing happened, the family kept moving back and forth between
Argentina and Spain and nothing, they began getting anxious as their whole stunt meant Messi
was no longer playing for Newell’s and eventually Messi even traveled to Spain in hopes of joining
Atletico or Real Madrid, but nothing came of it.
That’s when D-day finally came about and
a napkin changed Messi’s life forever. The agent met with Carles and eventually,
there was a call from Messi’s father, he was desperate, telling them he would go back to
Argentina, he didn’t see anything moving forward, Carles acted fast and saw he needed tangible
evidence so he looked around for paper and found only a napkin, he wrote down a
mock contract and signed it stating that Messi would sign for Barcelona regardless of
any objections for other members of the club.
It worked wonders and got Messi’s family
to trust that he would make it work, over the coming weeks, paperwork was filled and
Messi was officially an FC Barcelona player, it was only a matter of getting the family
registered in the country before he debuted. For a while, there was a sort of limbo where Messi
wasn’t necessarily tied with Barcelona though he was already living the average life of an academy
footballer, and you know what that means, word got around fast, Juventus, Inter Milan, Liverpool,
and Real Madrid all contacted Messi’s agent, and if you think that all of that was meaningless
agent talk let me tell you that Arsenal eventually even got Arsene Wenger to have
dinner with the agent to learn more about Leo, he has even said they were close to signing him,
the same way they did with Fabregas. Regardless, he stayed and a whole new chapter began.
At first, Messi wasn’t allowed to play for Barcelona’s academy, as not only was he still
registered for Newell’s, he was also considered a non-community minor, since he came from a foreign
country and for the first year the only solution found was to keep him training with the squad
while only going on friendlies with the B team.
But, though Barcelona tried their best
at sheltering and protecting his talent, to let it grow they had to let him run free and so
in his second game for the club, disaster struck… Messi broke his fibula and was out for the rest of
the season… There was worry that he would struggle to go back to his usual frenetic playstyle, but
once he was back, he finally got to enroll in the Spanish Federation, and he was so incredible that
quickly he got promoted to the under 16 squad, being trained by Tito Vilanova and playing
alongside some of the biggest talents in Spain, kids whose names meant nothing back then,
but would one day be heard all around the world like Cesc Fabregas and Gerard Pique,
both players who would leave Barcelona for England soon after, so maybe Messi moving
to Arsenal wasn’t that far fetched at all.
Over his first days with the squad Messi was
very shy, they say he was so quiet entering the locker room for the first time that some
didn’t notice him until he had already sat down. Once he got on the pitch, the coach
asked what position he liked playing at, one of the other players said that everyone was
scared, they had heard insane stories about Messi and they all thought if they picked their spot,
it was over for them. The goalkeeper of that squad has been quoted saying that he felt the only way
to stop him “was to pull out a pistol and shoot him, but honestly, he would probably dodge it”.
But that doesn’t mean Messi was invincible, his health problems remained, and though
there were no more worries regarding him not getting the treatment he needed, it turned
out that at this point, the treatment was a gift and a curse. While still going through its first
years, the treatment took a toll on Messi’s body and it was evident by his lack of stamina. Looking
back at his first interviews, you can even see his lament that he was unable to keep up with the
pace of the other kids, but still, whenever he did find the energy to perform he was unparalleled,
with a never seen playstyle, it seemed like he had taught himself a whole new way to approach
dribbling, even though many compared him already with Diego Maradona it was also obvious that
the aggressiveness with which he moved forward, the quickness with which he slightly adjusted
the ball seemingly once every millisecond made for moments that would not be forgotten, it was as
if Messi was an artist, carefully, deliberately, putting down one brushstroke at a time, slowly
painting the background as he patiently waited for the moment when his creativity would
finally be unleashed on the canvas.
As the years passed, Messi made it through
the ranks at breakneck speed and slowly but surely started bonding with the other kids,
after all after sometime Messi’s family went back to Argentina and Messi started living in La
Masia, where though others managed to see their families at times every weekend, Messi would
only be with his once or twice every year.
Regardless Messi persevered and by his fourth
year in Barcelona, as he turned 16 years old, he broke a record, playing for 5
different squad levels in a single year, before him, no one had managed more than three
but that year he started for the under 19 B squad, moved on to the under 19 main team, then oddly
enough he got called up for the first team and only then to the C and B teams, proving he
was incredible at any level, no matter what.
The debut for the first team happened because
Barcelona were invited to play a friendly against FC Porto in what would be the opening ceremony
of the Dragão Stadium, but there weren’t enough players available, so they were forced to bring in
academy players like Messi to fill up the squad.
Here’s one for the fans of the channel, as some
of you know I’m from Porto, what you don’t know is that on that day in 2003, my parents went
to watch the match, hoping to catch a glimpse of Barcelona greats like Ronaldinho, Xavi,
Overmars, Kluivert, etc. Well, aside from Xavi, none of those players were available, which I’m
guessing was terribly disappointing to them, little did they know they were getting to watch
the first 16 minutes of a 16-year-old who would become Barcelona’s greatest ever player. Now the
thing that really matters to me, they didn’t bring me along. I’ve asked them where they left me and
they don’t even remember, yes I’m still pissed, and yes I’m considering the possibility of filing
in for a child abuse case. By the way, just a few months later they also went on to watch Cristiano
Ronaldo’s debut at the Euros, in that same stadium and they also didn’t bring me, but that’s
just my childhood trauma, so moving on.
Before his first official season started, one
long-standing argument was finally settled, from the moment the Spanish federation realized
Messi was eligible for citizenship they had been attempting to bring him on, but Messi,
having grown up idolizing El Albiceleste, kept pursuing the dream of playing for Argentina,
so to settle the matter Argentina set up two under 20 matches in June of 2004 to lock Messi in as
an Argentinian international, leaving the world to wonder what could have been had he joined the
iconic Spanish national team of the late 2000s.
