‘I like beating defenders with my speed and skill...’
In this short biography of the football legend Lionel Messi, authors Tom and Matt Oldfield throw the spotlight on Messi’s early years of struggle as a young hopeful in Barcelona’s junior squad.
such an outsider all the time. I don’t fit in at all.”
“Are the other boys mean to you?” Jorge asked. Lionel shook his head. “No, they’re nice but they all speak Catalan to each other and I don’t understand a word! I hardly ever get the ball because I’m the new kid.”
“What do the coaches say?”
“They just keep talking about ‘the Barcelona way’. They want me to do twotouch passing like everyone else but that’s not my style! I like dribbling with the ball and beating defenders with my speed and skill.” “Yes, that’s what you’re so good at,” Jorge said. He couldn’t understand why the club would want to change the way his son played. He was a natural genius!
Lionel sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t play in any official matches at the moment anyway because I’m not Spanish.”
Jorge put an arm around his son’s shoulder. “Don’t give up! You’ll be able to play soon and then you’ll forget all about these difficult early days.”
Lionel hoped that his dad was right. For the first time, he felt like his career was going nowhere. With the hormone injections, he was getting taller but he was still under five foot, and the Infantiles A coach, Rodolfo Borrell, was always trying to protect him. “Cesc, be careful with Leo!” “Gerard, don’t be so rough!” Lionel didn’t want special treatment. In Argentina he was used to looking after himself. If defenders fouled him to win the ball, that was what referees were for. As soon as he could play official matches, he would show everyone that he was tougher than he looked.
“Leo, I’ve got good news! We’ve finally got permission for you to play,” Borrell told A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as “inspired, lyrical,” “elegiac,” “ingenious,” as well as “too sappy by half,” Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy. him one day after training.
Lionel smiled for the first time in weeks but it quickly turned to a frown.
“We want you to get lots of game time now,” his coach continued. “Infantiles A have a very good, settled squad, so I’ve decided to move you to Infantiles B for now.”
Throughout his childhood, Lionel had always been the tiny boy playing with much older kids. He still looked very young but for the first time, he was now the oldest player in his team.
“As long as I get to play ev- ery minute of every match, I don’t care!” he told his dad.
Xavi Llorens was the coach of Infantiles B. After five minutes of watching Lionel in training, he was shocked.
“Why isn’t he playing in the A team?” he thought to himself. “There’s no way that they have eleven players who are better than him. He’s a little Maradona!”
Lionel’s new teammates were shocked too—he was the best player they had ever seen.
“Coach, will Leo be playing for us all season?” they asked. “With him in our team, we could win the league!”
Llorens couldn’t answer that question but he was desperate to keep his new star player for as long as possible. Lionel made a great start in the B team and scored in his debut.
“It’s so nice to see you looking happy again!” his mum said as they walked back to their flat.
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last long at all. In only his second match, Lionel tried to block a clearance, just as the defender went to kick the ball as hard as he could. Owwwwwwwww! He fell to the floor, holding his leg in agony. He couldn’t believe it—just as he was starting to enjoy his football again, he had hurt himself. Lionel hobbled off the pitch and Jorge took him to hospital.
“How long will I be out for?” Lionel asked the doctor. He was hoping the answer would be one week, or maybe two at most.
“I’m afraid you’ve broken your leg,” the doctor told him, showing him the X-ray. “No football for at least two months, I’m afraid. It’s very important that you rest and let it heal.”
Lionel had never had a serious injury before. He felt restless if he didn’t kick a ball for a day; how could he survive two months?
On the journey back to the flat, Lionel didn’t say a word. His season was over and it felt like his whole life was over. He sat on the sofa and played Playstation for hours.
“Let’s go back to La Bajada for the summer,” Celia suggested at dinner one night. She hoped that it would help to take her son’s mind off football.
Back in Argentina, Lionel had plenty of time to think about his future. Did he want to go back to Spain, or he would rather move back home?
“We will do whatever you choose,” Jorge told him. When Barcelona called him for preseason training,
Lionel had to make his decision. It had been a bad first year but he wasn’t a quitter. He was a brave kid with a special gift. To achieve his dreams, he would just need to work harder than ever.
“I want to go back,” Lionel told his dad. “I want to play for Barcelona at the highest level and I’m going to make it happen.” Excerpted with permissions from ‘Messi’ byTom Oldfield and Matt Oldfield, published by John Blake Publishing