Afghan boy’s life tumbles from Messi to misery
KABUL: A boy from Afghanistan who made headlines for donning a plastic shirt with football superstar Lionel Messi’s name and eventually meeting his idol is now homeless after being displaced by a Taliban attack, reported Spanish news agency EFE.
Murtaza Ahmadi became a sensation in 2016 when a photo of him wearing the homemade Argentina jersey went viral.
The seven-year-old lived with his family in Jaghori district of Ghazni province. The Taliban attacked the area last month, forcing two-thirds of the population to flee.
“I miss our house in Jaghori. I don’t have a football here. I can’t play or go outside,” Ahmadi said in Kabul on Tuesday. He lives with his parents and four siblings in a rented house near the capital.
In a message for his idol Messi, Ahmadi said, “Take me with you. I can’t play football here. There’s just the sound of explosions and gunshots.”
Asked about the two jerseys and a football that Messi had gifted to him in Qatar in 2016, Ahmadi said, “We left them behind in Jaghori. We had to leave the house in the dark of the night and my mother told me to leave the ball and shirts at home.”
Afghan forces have driven out the Taliban from the area, but Ahmadi’s family isn’t ready to return home yet. The parents had been receiving threats due to their son’s rise to fame, his elder brother Humayoon Ahmadi, 17, said.
“After Murtaza met Messi in Qatar, life became difficult for us. We were living in fear. People around us thought Messi had given us a lot of money,” he said. “People were lurking around our house at night. Fearing he could be kidnapped, we locked Murtaza at home and didn’t even send him to school for the past two years.”