Messi signs, sends Tee to Afghan fan
Kabul, Feb. 25: Argentine football star Lionel Messi has sent not one, but two jerseys to the five-year-old Afghan boy who became an Internet sensation last month when he was pictured wearing a plastic bag with “Messi” scrawled on it in marker pen.
Murtaza Ahmadi travelled with his family from eastern Ghazni province to Kabul to receive the gifts sent by Messi through UNICEF, where he is a goodwill ambassador.
“Murtaza couldn’t stop smiling. He kept repeating: I love Messi,” UNICEF Afghanistan spokesman Denise Shepherd-Johnson said. Messi autographed the jerseys, writing “With much love” in Spanish on them, and added a football to the treasure trove, UNICEF said.
Purchasing a Messi jersey was beyond the means of Murtaza’s poor family, members of the persecuted ethnic Hazara minority living in volatile Ghazni, near Kabul.
His elder brother
Murtaza Ahmadi became an Internet sensation last month when he was pictured wearing an improvised Argentina jersey made of a plastic grocery bag with “Messi” scrawled on it as his poor family could not afford one. On Thursday, he received an autographed shirt and a football sent by Lionel Messi through UNICEF in Kabul. “I love Messi,” a smiling Ahmadi said.
Homayoun, 15, improvised the blue-and-white-striped plastic shirt with Messi’s name scrawled in black marker, and posted the photos of Murtaza wearing it on Facebook in mid-January.
The image touched a chord with football fans around the world, and earned Murtaza the sobriquet “little Messi” on social media.