- Messi got to play his first game for local side Grandoli because one of their players didn’t show up.
- Back then, the Argentine was too small to even shoot the ball, although his dribbling was already impressive.
- Leo’s first coach Salvador Aparicio says that it was clear from the early days that the youngster will have a great future.
“Lionel Messi came here with his family. His brothers played here. He was very small. I couldn’t tell how old he was. He was just a very small boy,” Leo’s first coach Salvador Aparicio told Part of the Game back in 2008.
“He was playing with a football on the stand and this night I was one player short. First, we decided to wait for the player to show up. But he didn’t, so I asked Lionel’s mother if I could borrow him. She didn’t like the idea. ‘He can’t play, he has never done it before.’
RELATED:
“I told her it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t have to do anything special. And his grandmother was there as well and she said: ‘Come on, let him play’. So they let me borrow him. The first time the ball came towards him, it came to his right, he just looked at it and let it pass.
“The play went on and again the ball came to him. The ball rolled towards him and basically hit his left let. Then… he controlled the ball and started running across the pitch. He dribbled past anyone crossing his path. And I was screaming: ‘Shoot! Shoot’. But he was too small to do it. Since then he was always part of my team. Soon he played against youth players.
“Did it show back then that he would become something special? Yes, yes, yes. He scored six or seven goals in every match. Instead of waiting for the other team’s keeper to kick the ball — he would simply take the ball from him and start dribbling all over the pitch. He was supernatural.
“How do I feel when I watch him play for the national team or Barcelona? I feel like I do now. I cry. Do you understand? I get emotional. The other day I watched him score this goal [vs Getafe]. They say it was like Maradona. I think he is better. I watch as many of his matches as possible.
“I will always feel a strong love for him. When I watch him play like that I cry. Because I remember when he was a little boy. Am I the one who discovered him? I didn’t discover him. But I was the first one to put him on a pitch. What can I say?”
As it turns out, Messi was only five years old when he played his first match for the local amateur side Grandoli. Later on, he joined Newell’s Old Boys’ academy and moved to Barcelona in 2001.
Follow our socials Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google News.
