Yesterday morning, Lionel Messi continued to shine with a hat trick in Barcelona’s 4-0 victory over APOEL. Thanks to that, El Pulga surpassed the legendary Raul and officially became the highest scorer in Champions League history with 74 goals.
A few days ago, the Argentine superstar also set a new record in La Liga with 253 goals, putting an end to Telmo Zarra ‘s record of 251 goals that had stood for nearly 60 years . So to achieve today’s success, what did Messi have to go through?
Messi just broke Rául’s record of 71 goals and is currently 4 goals ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo.
In 1987, Argentina was the defending World Cup champion and Diego Maradona was considered the best player in the world. However, at that time, few people expected that, in a poor area in the city of Rosario, the third largest city in Argentina, a new legend of soccer was born.
Lionel Andres Messi is the third son of Jorge Messi , a steel worker, and Celia Cuccittini , a janitor. On June 24, 1987, Messi was born healthy but only weighed 3 kg and was 47 cm tall. Things have never been easy for El Pulga .
From the very first days, football has been a part of Messi ‘s life . Rosario Central was crowned Argentine champion two weeks before Messi was born, but El Pulga inherited his father’s passion for another team in the city: Newell’s Old Boys. “ Every time Mom asks Leo to go out and help with errands, he always takes the ball with him. If he didn’t have a ball, he would make one from a plastic bag or a sock ,” Messi ‘s older brother Matias said.
Messi in his childhood.
From the age of 3, Messi began to become “best friends” with the ball. A few years ago, the Barcelona striker revealed: ” I was given my first ball when I was little, 3 or 4 years old. From then on, every holiday, Christmas or birthday, the only gift I wanted was a ball .” Messi often comes to watch his brother play at a poor local club, Grandoli. Grandoli’s youth team coach at that time was Salvador Aparicio . One day, Aparicio discovered he was missing a player.
“ I looked up into the stands and saw him playing with a ball ,” Aparicio told Goal before his death in 2008, “ but he was too young, so we decided to wait for him.” The other player came, but in the end he didn’t show up, so I asked Messi’s mother to let me borrow him for a while. His mother was not satisfied with this idea, she said he had never played a match before. Messi’s grandmother was also present and she said: ‘Come on, let him play ‘ ! And then they lent him to me .”
Messi has been passionate about the round ball since he was a child.
“ The first time the ball came to his feet, he just looked at it and let it slide. He didn’t even move. But the next time the ball rolled towards him, it almost hit his left leg. After that, he started controlling it and ran to the other side of the yard. He dribbled past everyone in his way. I yelled for him to shoot, but he was too young. Since that day, he has always been in my team , ”said Aparicio .
At that time, Messi was only 5 years old, but it didn’t take long for the little boy from Rosario to learn how to shoot and score goals. “ Later, in the youth team, he often scored 6-7 goals per match. Instead of waiting for the goalkeeper to kick the ball, he would grab the ball and start dribbling around the field. He is extraordinary ,” Aparacio concluded.
At the age of 9, Messi joined the club he still supports today, Newell’s Old Boys. During his time with Newell’s, Messi became an important piece in the “Maquina de la ’87” generation (the 87 machine) that lost only 1 match in 4 consecutive years. The reason this name is so is because all the players on the team were born in 1987.
Messi in Newell’s Old Boys shirt (bottom row, middle).
At the age of 11, Messi was discovered to have GHD (growth hormone deficiency). If not treated promptly, El Pulga ‘s dream of becoming a professional player will be a thing of the past. Unlike what the press reported, Newell’s tried to pay for his promising star’s medicine, but with the team in crisis and little funding, Messi’s father began to get impatient. Mr. Jorge once thought about bringing the whole family to Australia, but then he believed that his son’s talent could help the family overcome difficulties. He decided to bring Messi to River Plate for a “trial”.
Here, the 13-year-old striker quickly made an impression when playing with players 3 years older than him. It was also at this place that Messi first met Gonzalo Higuain , his future teammate on the Argentina team.
However, when Messi’s father asked River to give him a job and a house in Buenos Aires, River refused. On the other hand, Newell’s proved to be very stubborn during the negotiation process, so the transfer also went up in smoke. Instead, Mr. Jorge met with representatives of a talent agency, who called lawyer Juan Mateo , and then a video of Messi juggling an orange (113 times in a row) and Tennis balls (120 times) were sent to Barcelona scout Josep Minguella .
Messi in his early days at Barcelona (bottom row, far left).
The most surprising thing is, just one video like that was enough for Messi to win a spot in the Barca trial. After that, El Pulga left for the Catalan capital with his father and an intermediary named Fabian Soldini. The 27-year-old superstar’s first contract was signed on a napkin by his father, Minguella , and former Barca midfielder Carles Rexach , but Messi ‘s future remained unclear for the next three years. His father did not have a job, the club broke its promises several times, everything only became “easy” when the contract with a salary of 4,000 euros a month was given to Messi’s family in 2004.
That same year, a taller and healthier Messi debuted for the Barcelona first team at the age of 17. Also that season, Messi scored his first goal for the Catalan team with a skillful lob against Albacete. “ When we first saw him, he was so small that we wondered what he was doing here ,” Gerard Pique once shared about his teammate. Now, after a decade, the rickety boy has not only become the top scorer in La Liga history but also leads the record for goals in the Champions League.
Messi has now become one of the best players in Barcelona in particular and the world in general.
