Messi Read Free

tennis ball it was easier: 140 jueguitos , as they say in Argentina, 140 touches in the keepy-uppy.
    There was a table tennis ball lying around. ‘Give it to Leo.’ They gave it to him. Twenty-nine touches in a row. You try it. See if you can reach three. This Leo had an advantage over you: he spent all day, every day, with the ball. Between games, during the game, at home, in the school yard. Every blessed day.
    Eight years later, Mastercard released an advertisement using some of those same images. You can see it on YouTube.
    And since February, when the video was recorded, the Messi family would ask themselves, ‘When are we going? Where are we going? Are we going?’ It became the daily topic, one discussed both with uncertainty and a hint of excitement.
    The video, along with others taken at the Malvinas pitch showing Leo in his Newell’s shirt performing his slalom-like runs and dribbles, landed on the desk of Josep María Minguella, a well known players’ agent with a lot of influence at Barcelona. And a member of the Catalan club as well. He wasn’t too sure at first; the age and distant location of the youngster put doubts in his mind, and he would not be the only one. In the end, though, months later, convinced partly by the spectacular technical skills Leo showed on the tape, partly by the insistence of colleagues who had faith in theboy’s future, he decided to put all his weight behind the project and persuaded Barcelona to give him a trial.
    Just before Real Madrid made their own initial move to try to sign him.
    From his office Minguella called Argentina to tell the Messis to get their things together and come to Barcelona as soon as they could. ‘Bring the boy.’ Leo was about to fly for the first time.
    And to cross the Atlantic for the first time.
    Out of the aeroplane and into a humid Barcelona towards the end of summer stepped a 13-year-old Argentinian boy with talented feet and a suitcase. With the dream of succeeding, against new rivals and with new companions, at a big club far, far away from home.
    Those who saw him for the first time, so small, thought that Barcelona had made a terrible mistake. All this effort for … this? How was someone so small ever going to become a good footballer?!
    ‘I started to follow Barcelona at the time of Ronaldo and shortly afterwards came the opportunity to come here. At that time, to tell you the truth, I was very excited, and very keen to come here, to see what everything was like, because I was seeing it from a long way away. But when I got here I didn’t know how difficult it was going to be’ (Leo in Revista Barça ).
    It wasn’t Lionel Messi who arrived in Barcelona that day. It was just an excited kid.
    Dave Sudbury’s song ‘The King of Rome’ says that when you live in a dump like the West End of Derby you can’t live out your dreams. ‘I know that,’ says someone who wants to challenge destiny. ‘A man can crawl around or he can learn to fly/And when you live ’round here/The ground seems awful near.’ In Rosario in 2000, it was harder than ever to learn how to fly.
    Newell’s rejected the chance of helping the Messi family who needed a great deal of money to pay for the hormone injections that Leo so badly needed to help him grow. Had they paid for them, the young Leo would never have left Argentina.
    Nobody knew of anyone who had crossed the Atlantic so young in search of their footballing fortune: 13-year-olds certainly didn’t leave Argentina, nor was it usual for European clubs to sign foreign players of such a tender age. No one had ever had such anopportunity so early. Back at Las Heras nobody had the faintest idea what was going on. Leo has hepatitis. Yes? That’ll be it …
    In Barcelona, Minguella had been told that if Barcelona were prepared to meet the cost of the expensive growth hormone treatment and his father got a job, thus fulfilling the necessary regulations for the transfer of the youngster, Leo would come to them.