With the Catalonia championship in the bag, there only remained one barrier for the completion of a perfect season: the championship of Spain. Cesc knew that they were going to be his last games, that at 15 he was going to abandon the club of his life, his city, his people.
Alex García saw him crestfallen: ‘I asked him if he had some kind of personal problem, if it was a family matter. He told me that it had nothing to do with that, that he had had an offer from Arsenal and he was probably going to be leaving.’ He felt that with Xavi and Iniesta blocking his path, he had to go somewhere else to see whether or not he was good enough for this game.
‘Arsenal carried out negotiations in secret, although the deal did get as far as the head of junior football, Quimet Rifé,’ remembers Albert Benaiges. ‘But at that time there were many changes going on and there was a sort of power vacuum within the club caused by the change of board, just before the arrival of Joan Laporta. Arsenal ended up signing him.’
Cadete A also won the Spanish championship after beating Espanyol, Albacete, Atlético de Madrid and Athletic de Bilbao in the final. Messi was unable to play because of some bureaucratic problem: the federation had listed him as ‘assimilated’ or, put another way, not Spanish, and non-nationals were not allowed in that competition despite having been allowed to compete in the league. Cesc, slotted into Leo’s position, was the best player of the competition. Piqué, Cesc and Leo would not be together on a pitch again until a summer night in 2011.
In September 2003 Cesc left Barcelona. In October the same year, with a new board in place, Barcelona signed Messi until 2012, with a buyout clause of €30 million, which would increase to €80 million if he got into the Barcelona B squad, and €150 million should he get into the first team.
‘It was during that time that I felt most alone,’ remembers Víctor Vázquez. ‘Cesc, Piqué, Songo’o were leaving. I went up into the Junior A, as did Messi, although he swiftly jumped into the Barça C side, where he played three or four games before moving up to the Barça B. His progression was much faster than the rest, it was spectacular. I stayed, on my own, well, not alone of course, there were the other team members, but the four I wanted to be with were no longer there. Thank God we carried on winning everything. It was still a good team. They had gone but I stayed, keeping the flag up for them! It was the best time of my career, we enjoyed ourselves, like children. Well, we were children, really.
‘I’m going to call my son Leo. It pleases me to give him that name. Not Leonel, not Leonardo, but Leo.’ Leo Vázquez.
Season 2003−04: Four levels in a year
‘Barça Dying for This Kid’ was the headline on the front page of the leading Argentinian newspaper El Gráfico in August 2003. Underneath it said: ‘He’s Argentinian and he’s destroying them all in the lower ranks. He left Newell’s at the age of 13, before dazzling Carles Rexach. He’s only 16 but they can already see him in the Barcelona first team and they are already comparing him with Maradona. Messi is pure potrero (an Argentinian word which loosely means “footballer developed in uneven pitches”): left-footed, skilful and a goalscorer.’
Diego Borinsky, journalist:
On 18 November 2003 the newspaper El Mundo Deportivo, a huge Spanish sports paper, published its first big story dedicated to Lionel Messi, at that time an emerging talent. The headline was ‘Star of the Future’. The photo accompanying the article: Leo playing infinite keepy-uppy with an orange that just wouldn’t fall to the ground in a hushed and expectant Camp Nou. It is an honour for me to have done that interview with Leo and to have defended the way it was published and appeared on the newsstands that day. Various voices had been raised saying that they thought it was an exaggeration. From then, until today, Lionel Messi, Leo as he prefers to be called, hasn’t stopped surprising the world with his touches and dribbles. The orange, his co-star at that time, now rests in a hermetically sealed jar.
The journalist Roberto Martínez does indeed, to this day, keep the now famous orange preserved in a hermetically sealed jar.
Joan Laporta was liberal with his smiles and hugs, à la Kennedy, as he entered his first weeks in charge of the club. Emerging from two decades of an obsolete and antiquated management style, it needed a complete overhaul, not least with regard to its finances. By June 2003 radical changes had been implemented: it modernised its image, restructured its finances and completely overhauled the infrastructure. It also ‘Catalanised’ its message and recycled the squad. Within two years Barcelona had turned itself into one of the most recognised and admired clubs in the world.
Laporta was the engine that drove through these changes, with the support of the God-like Johan Cruyff in the background and sporting vice-president, Sandro Rosell, who used his Brazilian contacts to bring in, first, Ronaldinho and then later a host of Brazilian footballers of class and personality. In that first season they brought in Ricardo Quaresma, Rafa Márquez, Gio van Bronckhorst and halfway through the season, Edgar Davids, who stabilised a strong, attacking line-up. Director of football Txiki Beguiristain and coach Frank Rijkaard made up the rest of the management line-up with a brief to get the very best out of a group of young and hungry footballers.
After a poor start, Rijkaard took his side to second place in a league won by Rafa Bénitez’s Valencia. Ronaldinho scored 25 goals in all competitions, although his influence was probably felt more off the pitch than on. His hypnotic effect on the fans, entranced by his huge smile and the surfing motion he used to make with his right hand, soon rekindled a new feeling among Barça supporters, once again proud of their team.
Sandro Rosell was also in charge of changing the staff at the academy. Joan Colomer replaced Quim Rifé in charge of the youth setup and his was the voice that would tell of the spectacular progress of a young Argentinian boy whom Rosell already knew from when he had worked with Nike, the first big brand to sponsor him.
That season began for Leo in June with the side for 16-year-olds that was coached by his fellow countryman Guillermo Hoyos, also a Newell’s fan and recently arrived at the club. Hoyos had never seen him close up. In their first day together, the training was light but Leo shone with the ball. After five minutes, Hoyos was staggered. ‘He was great!’
What would happen that season was something that had never been seen before at the Barcelona academy.
The Youth B side travelled to Japan to take part in the fourth edition of the Toyota International Youth Under 17 Football Championship. Their first opponents were the Dutch side Feyenoord. ‘We were losing by a goal to nil after a quarter of an hour,’ explains Hoyos in Toni Frieros’s book. ‘It was difficult for the team to get into the game … I saw that Leo was angry on the pitch, he started to ask for the ball and with half an hour played he did something astonishing, dribbling past four defenders and the goalkeeper before putting in the killer pass to Songo’o.’ Four games later, Leo was voted player of the tournament. Just as he was in the next tournament held in Sitges. And in the one at Sant Vicenç de Montalt. And at San Giorgio della Richinvelda in Italy. In that last one, the under-16 side scored 35 goals in five games of just 45 minutes’ duration. The only thing they conceded was one corner. But Leo missed a penalty in an earlier phase. ‘The goalkeeper will be able to say that he once saved a penalty taken by the best player in the world,’ says Guillermo Hoyos. There was another one in the final against Juventus. Leo demanded the ball. He scored. He practised penalties at training at the request of Hoyos. It would serve him in good stead at a crucial stage in his career the following summer.
The coach, who identified Leo as a natural leader, although very quiet, gave him the captain’s armband. For a few games. ‘I’m choked up, Ángel, this kid is just like Diego.’ Ángel Alcolea was Hoyos’s assistant. And Diego … there’s only one Diego. In the pre-season with the Youth B, Leo lost just one game, against Real Madrid.
And it was at that moment that Pere Gratacós dispensed with one of the unwritten rules of the club in order to acquire the whirlwind that was
Messi. His meeting with Leo was accidental but the consequences of it would be overwhelming.
Pere was the coach of the Barcelona B side that played in Spain’s Division Two B, three levels of the academy above the under-16s. Between the two were the under-17s, Barcelona C and then Gratacós’s side, the first one with professional contracts. In the pre-season, around about August, they shared a training pitch in the annexe of the Mini Stadium with the youth team. ‘Barça B took half of the pitch and the rest of it was shared out among two other teams,’ he recalled. ‘While my assistants were preparing what we were going to do, I was watching the youngsters, in particular Guillermo Hoyos’s team. And I saw a player taking part in a short football match. He was fast, electric, very active, he would get hold of the ball, dribble with it, score.’
Leo had an extra gear compared to the rest of the group but what really impressed Gratacós was his speed in the first few metres and his efficiency.
‘Our training started and I said to my people that I was going to watch these players for a bit longer and that I’d be along later. That day Leo scored a number of goals. When he finished I said to my assistant, Arseni Comas: “I have seen a player with the Juniors who I think is going to have to train with us.” And he said, “from what team?” And I said, “I think he’s from the under-16 side”, and he said to me “are you mad?” So I said to him, “Arseni, he is better than some of the players we have in Barça B at the moment. Follow him for a week and when you’ve finished, we’ll speak and decide.” At the end of that week he came up to me and said: “Pere, you know what? I think you’re right, he should train with us.”’
Gratacós and Comas went off to speak to director of the youth set-up, Josep Colomer. They wanted him for the Barcelona B side. In that particular Junior side there were a couple of other players who were also outstanding, and Gratacós suggested that they should move up too, ‘more than anything to disguise Leo’s rise’. They were Oriol Riera and Jordi Gómez. ‘Are you nuts?’ Colomer asked them, but eventually he approved the decision, albeit with doubts over Leo’s physique and his ability to adapt at the new level, but nonetheless aware of his considerable progress. Just two months after coming under the control of Guillermo Hoyos, the 16-year-old Leo began to combine sporadic training sessions with Barcelona’s second team with playing and training for the Junior A side of Juan Carlos Rojo.
‘They quickly put Leo and me in the Junior A side,’ said Gerard Piqué. ‘Cesc had just left for Arsenal. At this age it’s usual for you to spend a season in the under-16 side, but Leo and I went into the under-17s with footballers a year older than us and we were a gang! Chechu Rojo was our coach, and in December they found out that I was going to Manchester so they dropped me back to the under-16 side again. But I went to see the Messi team, and in the Copa del Rey matches, Leo won the games single-handedly. I remember one match against Osasuna and it was a “Leo against the world” type of game and you need to remember that this was a side that had a lot of quality.’
Messi scored 18 goals in 11 games for the under-17s, one of them a memorably precise left-foot strike from the centre of the pitch that went in over the Betis goalkeeper in the final of a friendly tournament.
Barcelona C had problems – they’d won just one of their 15 games, and were lying bottom of their division group – and so Gratacós and Colomer decided he should play for the C team to get experience – his third team that season. ‘We’d seen him train and play with the Juniors,’ remembers Pep Boada, coach of the C team, Barcelona’s third side. ‘We thought he could give us something and that’s exactly how it turned out. We were going through a difficult period. The third division is a very hard and tricky division and we were a team full of very young kids. He arrived like a breath of fresh air, and the truth is he helped us a lot both as a group and individually. We were struggling at the bottom of the division and Messi reactivated us; he had an extra gear from everybody else.’ First game, against Europa: victory for Barcelona C, 3–1.
Leo scored five goals in ten games for that side, including two in four minutes to turn around a game against Gramenet that they were losing. The C side emerged from their crisis.
He played in a Spanish Cup round for the same side against Sevilla. The job of marking a Messi brimming with confidence fell to Sevilla’s right-back: Leo scored three goals in eight minutes. The defender would never forget that morning. His name? Sergio Ramos.
Messi continued to make great leaps forward, always positive and never complaining. ‘He loved football so much that it was difficult for him to say no to anyone, no matter who the side was,’ says Boada. ‘He needed to become stronger, but none the less he made us more competitive. When Messi had the ball it was a revelation. The other boys were enthralled and wanted to copy his style and technique. That creates a lot of competition, which was very positive for the group.’
‘My first memory of Leo would have been about 2003,’ recalls Ferran Soriano, at that time recently appointed the club’s financial vice-president and an emerging heavyweight on the new board. ‘My first conversation about him was with director of football Txiki Beguiristain: we wanted to find a way of facilitating his continued growth. To start with we had put him in a side with bigger boys that would test him more. I remember on one occasion he had scored five goals in a game and we said to Txiki, we can’t go on like this. We had to push him more.’
But he continued to be physically weak, and, despite the fact that he was going up the levels, his physical appearance continued to be a problem. Unless … ‘What we wanted was to build him up,’ says Gratacós, ‘so that when he went out onto the pitch against men of thirty-two, thirty-three, he would have sufficient body mass not to be pushed around. We said: let’s treat him on a physical level. Let him train the same as everyone else, but with more physical work. But no weights. He may have used them occasionally, but very little. We were talking about physical exercise.’
Having stopped taking hormone injections when he was fourteen, Leo needed to feel confident that his footballing progression, now well advanced, would run parallel with his body growth. That same season, even before the intervention of Gratacós, Leo and his father had frequently gone to a piece of waste ground close to the Hotel Juan Carlos (not far from their flat) and the Camp Nou to try out a physical regime, based on speed and stamina, initiated by Guillermo Hoyos. When he started training regularly with the Barcelona B of Gratacós, he focused on power and speed, aiming to increase the muscle mass in his legs and to strengthen his lower body. Later he would ask Ronaldinho’s personal trainer to complement this work, hoping to reduce the negative effects that such a rigorous exercise programme could have on a young boy. And when he wasn’t working, he was resting, crucial so that the benefits of the physical exertion should not go to waste: he had a siesta every day. On the sofa if he was at home.
So it was that Leo, in a demanding but carefully monitored way, gradually grew.
‘We’d been training for some months,’ recalls Gratacós. ‘Normally in the sessions I would put him on the right-hand side. Every Tuesday I would get together with Frank Rijkaard and we’d talk a bit about everything. Frank was insisting on replicating everything in the B side that existed in the first team. Ronaldinho would play on the left despite being right-footed, while Giuly was on the right. Leo would do what Ronnie did but on the right; being left-footed, with his mazy runs from far out into the danger areas, he would come inside and shoot at goal or confront the defence. Sometimes I would put three youth players (Paco Montañes, Oriol Riera and Leo) in those three positions in the attack; it was a way of helping them develop.’
At first when they asked him to train with the B team, four years older than himself, Leo felt out of his comfort zone, displaced. The players’ kit is kept in a cupboard inside the dressing room and everyone has to get their own. Leo, surrounded by new faces, could not shake off his shyness, and head bowed, would collect his things and find a place to change. None of this was helped by his
slightly confused situation: he was a Barcelona player, but not from any particular side. These were exciting times because he was going through the stages at breakneck speed, but they were also perplexing times.
The day of his Barcelona B debut drew closer. Inevitably. But, before that, a surprise, and a present.
Sunday, 9 November 2003
Leo Messi scores a hat-trick for Juan Carlos Rojo’s side against Granollers.
Tuesday, 11 November 2003
Pere Gratacós meets up with Frank Rijkaard, who has now been at the club for seven months. The Dutchman both needed and actively sought out the opinion of those in charge of the academy. They talked about the youth set-up, the players.
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Who’ve you got this week? asked Frank.
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We’re playing Novelda.
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Well, Pere, I hope it doesn’t mess your plans up too much but they’ve given me a friendly against Oporto on the same day that you’re playing, and I’ve got everyone with their national teams.
Barcelona had been invited to participate in the inauguration of the new Oporto stadium, built in time for the European Championships that were being played in Portugal the following year.
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Take whoever you want. Including a couple of youngsters who are being integrated into our squad, although they are only Juniors. Oriol Riera and Leo Messi, an Argentinian boy. It would be good if you could take them as well.
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Oriol and Messi?
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Yes.
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Where do they play?
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Messi, you can put him anywhere on the pitch.
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Sure?
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Take them and next week we’ll meet and you can tell me about it.
Messi Page 22