messi taken his glucose sugar tablets early in the game....
A damaged biceps femoris, the muscle that is called into action when a player requires that sudden burst of explosive pace, remains stubbornly uncooperative. Damage it, and part of the magic is gone.
Only rest, mental and physical, will cure it, so Leo has crossed the Atlantic to be close to his people and find the strength that will take him fully fit to Brazil next year,
At the peak of a stellar career that has seen him garlanded with honours and accolades, including four consecutive Ballon d’Or titles, three Champions Leagues and six La Liga titles, Leo has had to stop at the wrong time.
The date with the World Cup is one he has been dreaming about since he was a child. Like Diego Maradona before him ‘the flea’ carries the hopes of a nation on his young shoulders
In 1986 the wayward genius Maradona brought the World Cup back to Argentina, in the process establishing him as the greatest player in the world. Victory in Brazil would do the same for the little maestro from Rosario de Santa Fe.
Defeat, though, would give succour to those critics, including many from his own country, that would deny him his place in history, right at the very top of the footballing elite.
No matter that Pep Guardiola, and so many others, already think that Lionel Messi is quite simply the greatest player to lace up a pair of boots. Failure to win a World Cup before he retires will leave him feeling that he has let down his country, his family, his friends, but principally, himself.
But Messi is no stranger to adversity. Born with an outstanding, audacious talent, nature, almost as if re-dressing the balance, denied him the growth hormone that would permit him to grow the same as most other children.
Messi said: “When I was 11 years old they discovered that I had a growth hormone deficiency and I had to start a treatment to help me to grow. Every night I had to stick a needle into my legs, night after night after night, every day of the week, and this over a period of three years.”
“I was so small, they said that when I went onto the pitch, or when I went to school, I was always the smallest of all. It was like this until I finished the treatment and I then started to grow properly”.
The treatment was effective, but expensive, about $1,500 a month, far in excess of what the Messi family could afford. Social benefits went some way to covering the cost of the treatment but only for two years.
Leo’s father, Jorge, was left with no choice other than to go cap in hand to the club that professed to want Leo, his home-town side, Newell’s Old Boys.
“They said ‘we will pay for the treatment, don’t worry’,” says Jorge, “but it was like begging, they gave me 300 pesos and never any more. If they had paid, naturally he would have stayed at Newell’s.”
Former team-mate Gerardo Grighini recalls: “He would administer the injections as if it was perfectly normal. What’s taken him to the level he’s now reached is his talent and his self belief. Leo knew that he had to do that to become a professional player.
“Week after week after week, every day. Before going to sleep. Seven days in one leg, seven days in the other. And he did it quite naturally, just like that.”
Grighini adds: “I don’t think just anyone has the mental strength when they’re only 10 or 11 to say ‘I’m going to do this because it’s going to help me in the future … but he knew it would help him fulfil his dream.”
Leo managed to find a positive aspect. “I think being smaller than the rest allowed me to be a bit quicker and more agile, and that helped me when it came to playing football.”
Adrian Coria, another former coach at Newell’s, who is now part of the technical staff at Barcelona, agrees. “Perhaps we weren’t aware of it then, but in a way it is an advantage to be small, you control the ball better, you’re more agile and faster than the rest.”
There are still some people that question the use of growth hormone for a kid that needed it. The doctor who treated him, Diego Schwarsztein, explains. “Is it doping? The growth hormone has been used as a supplement by adults who do not need it, with the objective of gaining a sporting advantage.
"But you have to differentiate between growth hormone treatment for an adult who doesn’t need it, who is looking for a physical benefit – and they are high doses and can have very negative side-effects – and the treatment of a physical deficiency in a young boy”.
But why spend so much time, effort and money on a 10-year-old boy? His coach at Newell’s, Gabriel Digeralamo, explains.
“Technically he was gifted like no one boy I have ever seen," he says. "On one occasion I played him as sweeper, and what surprised me was that it looked like he had playing there all his life.
“On the Newell’s pitch the directors would ask him to do some keepy-uppy before the game, or at half time. When we went to Mar del Plata, or around there, before the game he would do keepy-uppies and they would throw money at him.
"Fifteen minutes would go by and he still hadn’t lost control of the ball. So the people would come up and throw a coin at him. In Peru, I think he got up to 1,200 touches. He was nine-years-old.”
He goes on. “Once he performed five successive flick-overs against one player. The player threw himself to the ground and grabbed Leo’s feet (laughter). On top of that he was 1.40 metres, while the other boy was 1.70. That’s how he enjoyed himself. He didn’t do it to brag ... no, no, no. There was never any lip, none of that, never.”
A former coach at Newell’s, Quique Domínguez, says: “There are footballers, and we have the example of our greatest ever idol in the past, Diego, who are brought down by drink, parties, an inflated ego, disagreements … Leo is not one of those.” Domínguez adds: “For Leo it’s like the ball forms part of his body.”
Messi made his teams almost unbeatable.
“At the final of one tournament, I remember that if we became champions we would win a bicycle, and we started the match without Leo, he just didn’t arrive”, his former team-mate Juan Juan Leguizamón remembers.
“We finished the first half 1-0 down. Then he arrived. He’d been locked in the bathroom of his house and had to break the glass in the door to get out. We ended up winning 3-1 with three goals from Leo.”
The financial difficulties raised by Messi’s growth problem still needed to be resolved. The long-term solution lay more than 10,000 kilometres away, with Barcelona who offered to pay for the treatment.
It was a key step towards Messi becoming a global superstar, but it came with the highest of price tags – the unity of his family.
Six months into the adventure things had not gone according to plan. Leo, barely 13, had to make the decision that would affect not just him, but his whole family, for ever.
Two bad injuries and a bureaucratic shambles meant he had hardly played a game. Worst of all he also had a desperately unhappy family, who had struggled to adapt to a new life, including his six-year-old sister.
As the family sat down to discuss the matter there was only one question on the table, and the only person who could answer it was Leo.
“What’s it going to be? Do we stay or do we go?”
His answer would define the shape of his family, its future and above all, for some members of it, its happiness.
Jorge Messi remembered the day. “I asked Leo what do you want to do, because the decision is yours, if you want to come back to Argentina then we’ll go back.”
Leo looked at me and said, ‘No I want to stay, I want to play football in Barcelona, and want to play in the first division for Barcelona’. It was his decision; nobody forced him into anything. That’s why I stayed with him.”
Celia Messi went back to Rosario with Leo’s three siblings. She still lives in Argentina, Jorge lives mainly in Spain. Jorge Messi would later admit that if he had to make the decision all over again, to relive the whole story, he would never have let the family split up.
Contractual problems also made life difficult for the Messis in the early years at Barcelona.
Leo’s representatives originally told Jorge that Leo would earn 100 millions pesetas a year and Jorge would be given a paid job. The first never happened and the second took months to be confirmed. Issues over commissions paid and a breakdown in trust meant that from that moment on Jorge became not only a father to his son, but also his manager.
A compromise was eventually found. In an unprecedented move, on 5 December 2001, nine months after the signing of the first contract, it was decided that the then-14-year-old Leo would receive the same wage as if he was a Barcelona B player and Jorge got a loan to do some building work on their flat in Barcelona, an ingenious way of compensating the family.
It has since been goals and medals all the way but those early struggles have shaped Leo just as they have other footballers whose stolen adolescence was spent in training grounds and trips to matches.
It is a strange experience the one footballers live and Leo is one of the lucky ones to have survived. The reality is that most of those who, at 12, decide to be professionals, fall over the edge.
Pursuing his football dream required Messi, and his family, to make sacrifices that nearly destroyed them, but his determination and ability enabled him to realise his ambition and gain the god-like respect he now enjoys from millions.
Messi, by Guillem Balague, is published this week by Orion Books.
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