梅西远射破门拯救阿根廷队！从小矮人到一代球王，22分钟英文短片速看超级巨星的蜕变之路… （附视频&演讲稿）

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.