Lionel Messi

• 1. Introduction

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  Lionel Andrés Messi was born on the 24th of June 1987 in Rosario, a city in the Santa Fe Province of Argentina. By the time he was ten years old, doctors had told his family he would stop growing. His body could not produce enough growth hormone on its own, and the therapy that might fix it cost at least 1,000 pesos a month. His first club, Newell's Old Boys, promised to help pay, then pulled out. A foreign club would eventually write his first contract on a paper napkin. What follows is the story of how a small, quiet boy from Rosario's south-eastern district of Las Heras became, by the judgment of the sport's own governing bodies, the greatest footballer who ever lived.

• 2. Rosario Roots

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  Jorge Messi headed a department at a pressed steel manufacturer in Villa Constitución, and his wife Celia Cuccittini worked in a magnet manufacturing workshop. They met as young people in Las Heras and married in 1978, after Jorge completed his military service in the Argentine Armed Forces. On his father's side, Lionel is the great-grandson of immigrants from the Marche region of Italy, with the Messi surname tracing back to Porto Recanati.

  At the age of four, young Leo joined Abanderado Grandoli FC, where his father coached him. His maternal grandmother, also named Celia, accompanied him to every training session and every match. She died shortly before his eleventh birthday, and from that point on Messi has celebrated every goal by looking upward and pointing to the sky in her memory.

  When Messi was seven he joined Newell's Old Boys, the Rosario club he would support for the rest of his life. Over the next six seasons he scored close to 500 goals and anchored a nearly unbeatable youth team his teammates called The Machine of '87, a name taken from the year they were all born. His goalscoring idol at that age was Brazilian striker Ronaldo, whom Messi described as "the best forward I've ever seen."

• 3. A Napkin Contract

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  River Plate, the Buenos Aires giant, scouted Messi after he scored four goals in a trial. The club offered to pay for his medical treatment, but Newell's refused to release his player card and the move collapsed. The Messi family turned their eyes to Europe instead.

  In September 2000, when Messi was 13, they arranged a trial with Barcelona. First-team director Carles Rexach watched the boy and immediately wanted to sign him. The board hesitated; signing foreign players so young was highly unusual for European clubs at the time. An ultimatum was issued on the 14th of December, and Rexach, finding no paper at hand, wrote a contract on a paper napkin to prove Barcelona's commitment.

  The family relocated to Barcelona in February 2001 and moved into an apartment near Camp Nou. For the first year, a transfer dispute with Newell's meant Messi could only play in friendlies and the Catalan league. Without competitive football and with his mother, brothers, and younger sister María Sol back in Rosario, he struggled badly with homesickness. Some of his new teammates initially assumed he was mute, he was so quiet. He was formally registered with the Royal Spanish Football Federation in February 2002, and within one season he had befriended Cesc Fàbregas and Gerard Piqué and become the top scorer for the Cadetes A with 36 goals in 30 games. That team won an unprecedented treble of the league, the Spanish cup, and the Copa Catalunya. In the Copa Catalunya final, playing a week after suffering a broken cheekbone, Messi was only allowed to start if he wore a protective mask. When the mask became a hindrance he took it off and scored two goals in ten minutes. The match entered club lore as the partido de la máscara.

• 4. The First Team

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  Winger Ludovic Giuly watched a teenage Messi train with Barcelona's senior squad and said later: "He destroyed us all. He would dribble past four players and score a goal. Even the team's starting centre-backs were nervous. He was an alien." Messi made his first-team debut at 16, coming on in the 75th minute of a friendly against FC Porto on the 16th of November 2003.

  After that session, the Brazilian star Ronaldinho told his Barcelona teammates that the 16-year-old would become an even better player than himself. Ronaldinho called Messi "little brother" and his mentorship made the transition onto the first team far easier. Ronaldinho would later remark, after winning the 2005 Ballon d'Or, "I'm not even the best at Barça," nodding toward his young protégé.

  Messi signed his first professional contract on the 4th of February 2004, which ran through 2012 and carried an initial buyout clause of €30 million. A month later he made his debut for Barcelona B in the Segunda División B, and the clause automatically rose to €80 million. He was smaller and physically weaker than almost every opponent he faced at that level. He worked deliberately to add muscle mass and strength. By the time manager Frank Rijkaard promoted him to the first team for the 2004-05 season, Messi made his La Liga debut on the 16th of October 2004 at 17 years old. He scored his first senior goal on the 1st of May 2005, becoming the youngest scorer in the club's history at that point. On his 18th birthday, his senior contract was signed with a release clause of €150 million. Three months later, as his form continued to impress, the salary was doubled and the contract extended through 2014.

• 5. The Guardiola Years

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  Pep Guardiola, a former captain of the club, took over as manager ahead of the 2008-09 season and immediately gave Messi the number 10 shirt. Under Guardiola's system, Messi became the tactical focal point of everything. That season he scored 38 goals, and alongside Samuel Eto'o and Thierry Henry, the squad produced 100 goals in all competitions, a club record at the time. Barcelona won the Copa del Rey, La Liga, and the Champions League, the first treble in the history of Spanish football.

  Guardiola once said of his player: "Messi is the only player that runs faster with the ball than he does without it." The praise was not sentimental. As early as August 2009, Guardiola described Messi publicly as the best player he had ever seen and would ever see.

  The records accumulated rapidly after that. In the 2011-12 season, Messi's 73 goals in all competitions set the single-season record for European club football. He overtook César Rodríguez's 57-year-old record to become Barcelona's all-time top scorer, doing so at 24 years old. His 50 La Liga goals that season set a competition record. In the calendar year 2012, he scored 91 goals for Barcelona and Argentina combined, surpassing Gerd Müller's record for most goals in a calendar year, a record that had stood for decades. Guardiola resigned after four years and a 14th trophy with the club, having won the Copa del Rey in Messi's final season under him.

• 6. MSN and a Second Treble

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  Barcelona hired Luis Enrique for the 2014-15 season, and he added Uruguayan striker Luis Suárez, who had just won the European Golden Shoe at Liverpool, to complement Messi and Neymar up front. The trio became known colloquially as MSN. That season they scored 122 goals in all competitions, a Spanish football record. A hat-trick against Sevilla made Messi the all-time top scorer in La Liga, surpassing Telmo Zarra's record of 251 league goals that had stood for 59 years. Barcelona won La Liga, the Copa del Rey, and the Champions League, becoming the first club to win the continental treble twice.

  The following season MSN broke their own record with 131 combined goals. Messi won the FIFA Ballon d'Or for a fifth time on the 11th of January 2016. In the 2016-17 season, his 37 La Liga goals earned him the Pichichi and the European Golden Shoe for a fourth time. During the 2018-19 season he won his sixth European Golden Shoe and set the record for winning it three seasons in a row.

  Messi was named Barcelona's captain in May 2018, following the departure of Andrés Iniesta. His first act as captain brought a trophy: a Supercopa de España won 2-1 over Sevilla. With Messi as captain, he accumulated a record eight Pichichi trophies in La Liga. By the time he left Barcelona, he had won 34 trophies with the club, a club record, including ten La Liga titles and four UEFA Champions Leagues.

• 7. Departure and New Chapters

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  On the 8th of August 2021, Messi held a tearful press conference at Camp Nou. Financial difficulties linked in part to the COVID-19 pandemic meant Barcelona could not renew his contract even with a proposed 50% salary cut. He had expected to stay. Two days later, he signed with Paris Saint-Germain on a two-year contract, choosing squad number 30, the same number he had worn when he made his senior debut for Barcelona.

  At PSG, a goal against Nice took him past Cristiano Ronaldo as the all-time highest goalscorer in European club football, reaching 702 goals. In the same match he recorded his 1,000th career direct goal contribution at club level. He won two consecutive Ligue 1 titles, but his individual output in the league was modest, with just 6 goals in his first campaign. He departed PSG at the end of the 2022-23 season.

  On the 15th of July 2023, Inter Miami of Major League Soccer announced his signing on a two-and-a-half-year contract. His earnings from salary, signing bonus, and an equity stake in the club reportedly surpassed $50 million. Inter Miami co-president Xavier Asensi said simply: "There is a before and after Messi. He has changed everything." The No. 10 Inter Miami jersey became the best-selling in the league and nearly the best-selling in the world. He scored nine goals in his first six games. During the 2024 season he set the record for the most assists in a single MLS game with five. Miami won the Supporters' Shield with 74 points, an MLS league record. Messi was named MLS Most Valuable Player. In the 2025 season, he became the fastest player in MLS history to reach 40 league goals, and during the Eastern Conference final his assist put his career total past Ferenc Puskás for the most assists of all time across all competitions. Inter Miami won MLS Cup 2025 against the Vancouver Whitecaps, 3-1, and Messi was named Cup MVP. He was named MLS MVP again, the first player in league history to win the award in back-to-back years. On the 23rd of October 2025, he signed a contract extension through 2028, by which point he will be 41 years old.

• 8. Argentina and the Long Wait

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  Messi's relationship with the Argentina national team was complicated for much of his career. He had won the gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics and was the best young player at the 2007 Copa América, but across the 2014 World Cup final, the 2015 Copa América final, and the 2016 Copa América Centenario final, Argentina lost all three. After the third consecutive final defeat, Messi announced his retirement from international football. A nationwide campaign in Argentina persuaded him to return.

  His bond with his compatriots had always been uneasy. Diego Maradona had famously led Argentina to World Cup victory in 1986, setting an expectation that Messi could not immediately match. Argentines identified with the fiery, extroverted Maradona from the slums; Messi was reserved, grew up in a comparably unremarkable household in Rosario, and had left for Spain at 13. His early reluctance to sing the national anthem before matches deepened the distance many fans felt. Football journalist Tim Vickery observed that the shift in Argentine public opinion came in 2019, when Messi made a conscious effort to become, in Vickery's words, "more one of the group, more Argentine."

  The trophy drought ended in 2021, when Argentina defeated Brazil in the Copa América final. Messi scored or assisted nine of his team's 12 goals across the tournament and was named player of the competition. A year later, at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Messi led Argentina to its first World Cup victory in 36 years, scoring twice in the final against France and winning the Golden Ball for a second time, becoming the first player to achieve that double. He told reporters afterward that the victory "won over all the people of Argentina. Today 95% or 100% of Argentines love me and that's a beautiful feeling." Maradona had given Messi his number 10 shirt and his blessing years earlier, telling him: "The No 10 is yours. There's nobody better than you to wear it." After the World Cup, journalist Jorge Valdano said he saw a "Maradonian" edge to how Messi had played throughout the tournament.