That was the general consensus.
One of Borrell’s assistants was worried. He saw how he was putting on bandages and asked him if he was injured. No, no, it’s an Argentinian custom. To prevent sprains.
Leo said nothing.
The jokes kept coming from the group of 12- and 13-year-old boys. ‘The bloke’s a midget.’
Messi ran onto the pitch next to Piqué, who looked twice his size. Leo came up to his waist.
Jorge was in the stands and heard what was being said. ‘He’s very small, he’s too small.’
The group began to warm up. Always with the ball. Firstly, it was all about controlling the ball. One touch, two, three … ten, eleven, twelve … ‘He’s not dropping the ball,’ said one of the spectators. Twenty, twenty-one …
Cesc: When he started to touch the ball we saw that he was different from the rest of the boys who came for trials.
Gradually Rodolfo Borrell set up some one on ones and shots on goal. And when Leo got it … problems.
Cesc: First, he made me look like a complete fool and stuck it in. And as a young player I had a special talent in defensive one against one situations. Now I’d lost it. I used to steal the ball with ease, I don’t know how I did it. Anyway, he made me look so stupid you wouldn’t believe it. Okay, the first time you’re not expecting it, you’re a bit too relaxed. But he did it to me again and again.
Messi was dazzling, with his dribbling, his finishing, his consistency. The youngsters entertained themselves watching the new boy’s moves. He had won the group’s respect. From that moment on, anyone who called him ‘the midget’ did so with admiration, even affection.
From the stands you could hear: ‘Oh, wow. This is something else.’
Leo travelled to the Mini and the pitches adjacent to it by underground from the Plaza España. Four stops on the Green line to Las Corts. As there wasn’t training every day, with his father and one of Jorge’s or Minguella’s colleagues they passed the time strolling beside the port, with an occasional visit to a museum, although he didn’t spend a lot of time in them – they didn’t make a great impression on the kid. The tourist bus took them to the Sagrada Familia, to the port, the zoo. He would tour the Old City. Tuesday was a free day. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday he was part of the group and joined them in the drills on the clay court. Friday they would concentrate more on tactics and he took a less active role. The weekend was also free for him; naturally he couldn’t play official games yet.
It was still sunny in September, the heat less fierce than in August and better for walking at any time of the day. So the Argentinian group would travel to Sitges, spending mornings on the beach, and took in a football match, his first visit to the Camp Nou. The first Saturday of his stay he saw Barcelona play there. The opponents, Racing Santander. Patrick Kluivert scored a brace, Marc Overmars the third. The men of Llorenç Serra Ferrer, not the most popular of Barcelona coaches, won 3–1. Leo took a photo from the stands. The stadium was enormous but the crowd made little noise.
They wanted to go to the Barcelona−Milan group stage Champions League match on 26 September. They couldn’t get tickets. The Italians won 2–0.
The rest of the time Leo was never far away from a ball. They played head tennis in the hotel bedroom and he would take the ball out onto the terrace to weave past imaginary opponents, to play keepy-uppy, to caress it. Television filled the remaining gaps.
Lionel did not say much; he wasn’t timid so much as introverted, charming to any adults who approached him, monosyllabic to his team-mates in those first days. Off the pitch there was a lot of killing time waiting for the return from Sydney of Charly Rexach because no one would give the nod to confirm his signing.
On the pitch he was something else. Next to his new team-mates he didn’t seem like that timid boy who the day before was quietly eating a pizza, or a hamburger or a plate of pasta. Or just walking, lost in his own thoughts.
When he was alone in his room, or just before going to sleep, by the light of his bedside lamp he would take out a thick pen syringe and inject whatever leg needed injecting that day.
And the same routine the following day. Touches of the ball, a visit to the city, pizza, training in the afternoon. An injection.
‘Leo, do what you know. Get the ball, don’t pass to anyone, and head for goal.’ Jorge Messi’s advice was about exploiting the very talents that had brought him to Barcelona, but also a natural reaction to Borrell’s insistence, as a Barcelona trainer, that they should play one- and two-touch football. ‘We have to come with our own game, show you as you are.’ If he knew one thing it was how to dribble. While the rest of the group passed the ball around and obediently kept to their space, Messi offered something else.
And so it went on. Day after day. He trained with the Junior A group, and at the end of training would play a game with the Junior B side. His father would watch him from the stands or leaning on the fence that separated the two pitches.
One day he scored five goals and hit the post twice.
He played for himself but did so with such conviction, with such talent, that it wasn’t worth trying to correct him. ‘One touch, Leo,’ shouted Rodo, but he was really reminding the rest of the group. ‘One, or, at the most, two touches.’ It didn’t matter what he was told. Leo played as he had always done, with little touches, with speed, with flow, dribbling right and left. A ball player more than a footballer – and there is a huge difference.
Another day he scored six goals.
Jorge wasn’t sure if the pressure was good or bad for his son. At some point a friend of Minguella suggested to him that he should reward Leo’s goals with presents. If there was a rucksack that he liked, some football boots, he would be given them in exchange for goals, let’s say five. His father wasn’t sure it was going to work and preferred not to interfere. But the challenge motivated Leo. He scored four but one shot crashed against the woodwork and appeared to go in. No, no, it didn’t go in, he was told. Leo went crazy – it did go in! There was a complete set of sportswear at stake. A heated discussion followed. He eventually got the present.
After the first week, the former Barcelona player Migueli, who was working in the youth ranks of the club, came round and asked: ‘Who’s the boy who has come from Argentina for a trial?’ Leo, who was training, was pointed out to him. ‘The little feller there, the one in the middle of the pitch.’ He looked at him. He had a ball on top of his left foot. He was awaiting instructions. ‘I don’t have to see him play football; just by the way he is standing you can see he is a good footballer.’ Just like that. Nothing more.
He’d hit the nail on the head.
It was late, around eight o’clock in the evening. Migueli continued watching the session. ‘What are these people doing that they haven’t signed him yet? This boy is the closest thing I have seen to Maradona.’ And he should know. Migueli, a former centre-back, played with Diego at Barcelona.
But the days were passing and no one was saying anything to Jorge. Nor to Leo. They were waiting for a decision from Rifé and the return of Rexach, who was still away.
But they had to get back to Argentina; they had already lost too many schooldays. Jorge insisted that they could not be away for more than a week. It was now the eighth day.
Something wasn’t right.
There is one thing in the Messi mythology that has been misinterpreted. It’s said that some of the Barcelona coaches were not convinced of his talent, uncertain about signing him, would say one thing to his face and another behind his back. Their names are mentioned sotto voce because some of them are still at the club. Others have developed successful careers away from the Camp Nou that might be damaged if this was to be revealed. Rexach’s interpretation of the situation further confuses the issue. ‘There was your typical guy who would say: well, he’s too small, the sort of bloke that should play indoor football, a table football player … the usual stuff!’
But in truth, the trial was going well. More than
well; it was also decisive. Just five minutes at one of the training sessions was enough to show his talent. From a coaching point of view Charly Rexach’s appearance at pitch two or three to watch Messi was hardly necessary either. He had no need to make the casting vote.
But in the end Rexach had to be convened and the Messis had to delay their return to Argentina – the first team director should not have been involved in such decisions, but no one, it seemed, was prepared to take responsibility for the possible failure (or even, in the best case scenario, the success) of signing up a 13-year-old Argentinian boy.
How on earth do you explain the doubts?
To begin with, the involvement of such club heavyweights (Rexach, in spirit at least, Minguella, Anton Parera, Rifé) in the potential transfer of a child footballer was proof that this was something special, something unusual. Leo was protected from above and, with so many important names on the case, something was definitely going on. Or at least that’s how it was seen by those looking on from the sidelines. The matter became the talk of the town during those weeks and created great expectations. Rodolfo Borrell’s colleagues spent whatever time they could taking a look at him. The debate was not so much about his talent but how to harness his individuality to the club’s own established and collective game plan.
But this heavyweight interest was not the oddest thing.
In 2000, the very idea of bringing over a youngster from Argentina seemed like lunacy. It simply wasn’t done.
Leo’s talents were obvious for all to see. An anonymous source at the club who saw him during those two weeks described Leo as las ostia en patinete, which literally means ‘the dog’s bollocks’ (but translates more or less as ‘something that moves like lightning’): ‘he did then’ – that source continues – ‘the same as he does now, but in miniature’. It would be an injustice to history to suggest that the reason they might not have wanted him was because he was too small. There was something else.
These days it is considered quite normal to bring a youngster of whatever age to a club from anywhere in the world, and the battles to sign children as young as eight years old are well documented. But in 2000 they were breaking new ground. Five years earlier, the signing of an Infantile (12−13 years old) from Mataró, Granollers, Santpedor (towns less than an hour from Barcelona) was considered to be bringing them a long way. The Cadetes (14−15 years old) came from all over Spain.
And now they were talking about taking on a young Argentinian lad who had arrived, aged just 13 … hold on a minute!
Many studies have been carried out on the subject, and at that time the general idea was that, no matter how good a player might be at that age, no one could guarantee that he would make it into the first team. Or even end up as a professional footballer. ‘To take him away from his family, his country, his friends, all of that, to put him in a situation where there are no guarantees. Of course, now he has become the best player in the world and it has become a wonderful story but …’ so says another witness to that most unusual of arrivals. It would not be the youth football coaches who would decide his future, but they talked among themselves about the possible dangers of the situation; the club had been reticent even about signing players from distant parts of Spain, taking them from their home environment, their school. The normal thing, the logical thing – it was said – was that Leo should be treated the same. Oriol Tort, one of the most renowned scouts, the leader and ideologist of the Barcelona academy, has always claimed that the preferred age for a player to join La Masía is 15 or 16. That’s how things were in 2000.
So was it, as legend has it, lack of awareness among the coaches, or a sensible reluctance on their part because they knew the effect that uprooting the boy would have on his family?
For example: Andrés Iniesta. As a youngster (12 years old, 1996) he took part in the National Tournament of Brunete with teams from the Spanish first division, La Liga. As always happens in tournaments of importance, the clubs sent various scouts. The best players on this occasion were, first, Iniesta from Albacete, and second, Jorge Troiteiro from Mérida, at that time both La Liga clubs. There was no prize for second place, but the debate centred around which one of the two was better. Barcelona took note, spoke with Iniesta’s family, worked out the contractual details with the player before deciding that he should remain at home and that they would monitor his progress from a distance. The idea was to bring him to La Masía two or three years later when he had reached the age of Cadete.
Troiteiro’s father was not prepared to take defeat sitting down, so he set out by car from Mérida, in Extremadura in western Spain, across the country to the offices of Barcelona; his son was going to be a footballer – no question about it. He knew that the club had had positive reports about the boy and the idea of Barcelona appealed to the family. So, either they signed him now or he would go to Madrid or to Valencia, or wherever. Barcelona had told the family about the effect on the boy’s schooling, the upheaval, the relocating, but his father persisted. It was his son and he was going to get him into a big club.
Barcelona, despite their initial objections, yielded to the pressure because the youngster, an extremely skilful left-winger, had a lot of talent, something that he would soon show at the lower levels. But there was no boy of that age at La Masía; in fact there was only one under the age of 16. So what did Barcelona do? They called Iniesta, also from La Mancha, to come to Barcelona to keep Troiteiro company so that he would not be lonely.
Jorge Troiteiro was eventually thrown out of La Masía for indiscipline. Iniesta, who spent a lot of the time crying in his room in the farmhouse in which the players from outside Barcelona lived, would years later score the goal that earned Spain its first World Cup.
There are fears, doubts, promises and today also a methodology in Barcelona’s famous academy, but still there is no guarantee of success.
Someone asked Leo after eight days of training if he still thought it was a good idea to sign for Barcelona? That person was Rodo Borrell. Leo said yes, he liked the training methods, in Rosario it was all much more physical and here most of the work was done with the ball, which pleased him. He was enjoying it. And he could see how massive the club was. And the challenge.
He wanted to stay.
Ten days after the Messis’ arrival at Barcelona, there was little more to see of the city. No more to know about him as a footballer. Everything was done. He had taken nearly two weeks off school and that had never been part of the plan. It was clear that any club would have wanted Leo, but this was a unique experience for Barcelona and no one wanted to take the risk: they had to wait for Charly.
Jorge was ready to return home. ‘Stay one more day, Rexach will be back on Monday,’ he was told.
The president’s adviser finally arrived from Sydney and met up with Rifé. There were a number of issues on the table, among them the matter of the Argentinian boy. ‘Play him in an older group, two years older. I want to see how it unfolds when he plays with the bigger boys,’ said Rexach.
Charly Rexach: I got involved so as to give my casting vote, because if those under me had said ‘let’s sign him’ then I wouldn’t have come down.
The final trial was set to take place on 2 October. At six in the evening. Instead of the clay surface where he had played most of the time, this would take place on pitch three, the artificial surface located behind the bowling alley. Facing the Mini Stadium.
The moment had come. There was no going back. The following day Leo and Jorge were to return to Argentina. Leo, all one metre forty-eight centimetres of him, was to face youngsters two years older than him.
Migueli came to see him. And Rifé, of course. And Quique Costas, Xavi Llorenç, Albert Benaiges, and also Rodolfo Borrell who had had him in his team for the last ten days. They sat on the substitutes’ bench.
The game started. And Charly Rexach still hadn’t arrived.
He was coming late after a lunch. Recently back from Australia, he was between time zones.
Charly Rexach: I did the usual; walked about a bit, and stopped when I saw him get the ball.
Rexach comes through the door, passes the corner flag and goes behind the goal.
Charly Rexach: He was easy to spot, because he was tiny, quite a sight, no?
Messi gets the ball in the centre of the pitch and starts to dribble towards whoever stands in his way.
Jorge Messi: Carlos [Charly] came in and Leo made a move.
Charly Rexach: Like I said; I went behind the goal, and kept walking …
Leo dribbles past two, rounds the goalkeeper. Scores.
Jorge Messi: Great play. Goal!
It was their only goal of a game that Leo’s team ended up losing 2–1.
Rexach gets to the substitutes’ bench – not the first but the second – where all the coaches have gathered.
Charly Rexach: It took me seven or eight minutes to complete the lap. I went to sit down on the bench, and …
Ten minutes after he had arrived, Charly Rexach left pitch number three. He had sat down for a couple of minutes on the youth coaches’ bench, turned around and gone out again the way he had come in.
All that waiting. And he hardly saw a thing!
Jorge Messi thought Rexach had not given Leo the attention he deserved after the journey, the days of waiting. Had Charly noticed the couple of things that Messi did? Jorge was asking himself. Surely that was enouh to keep him at the club. Hopefully.
At the end of the game, Leo said nothing. Always quiet, he just listened.
Part One
In Rosario
1
‘Pass it, Leo!’ But He Never Did
Every Sunday: last one there is a rotten egg!
Messi Page 3