shorter today,” said Dr Schwarzstein. As a ten-year-old kid, who was then just 1.25 metres tall, he be- came a man overnight by realising that achieving his hopes of becom- ing a professional footballer would come through a lot of pain. Once a day, every day, he had to religiously perform the ritual of injecting him- self in his leg. Day after day, tired, isolated, scared, every night, just before going to bed... In his brain and his body he was a ten-year-old, but he was standing on the legs of a grown man. “The injection was routine. Every night I would take a needle and ... once in my right leg, and the next night in my left. Wherever I went, the injections went with me. I had to keep them in the fridge, and I had to have them,” said Messi. His family didn’t have the $960 a month that was needed for the treatment, and Messi’s father, Jorge, later revealed that everyone had helped: the club, neighbours, workers from his factory, people who didn’t even know him but had heard about his skills... The treatment was successful and Leo grew by 23 cen- timetres in three years. It was then that Barcelona en- tered the story, after having heard that a kid the likes of which the plan- et had never seen was growing up on the dusty streets of Rosario. Leo crossed the Atlantic together with his father and arrived at the “Camp Nou”, where he impressed coach Car- los Rexach so much that he was of- fered a contract written on a paper napkin, out of fear that he would be snatched up by another club. Everything that followed has now gone down in football histo- ry. This Argentine-born kid of Ital- ian-Spanish origins changed the rules of the world’s most popular sport. “Leo uses only his left foot and is the best in the world. Imagine how big a problem we would be in if he also played with his right foot,” said Zlatan Ibrahimović once. Messi has been connected to Barcelona since the year 2000, while he made his debut for the first team
Najviše golova za jedan klub u istoriji Most goals scored for a single club 1. Messi - Barcelona 644 2. Pelé - Santos 643 3. Müller – Bayern M. 565 4. Peyroteo - Sporting L. 544 5. Bican - Slavia Praha 534 6. McGrory - Celtic 522 7. Jones - Glenavon 517 8. Seeler - Hamburg 507 9. Eusebio - Benfica 473 10. C. Ronaldo - Real M. 450
on 16 th October 2004 in the city derby against Espanyol. However, he had to wait until 1 st May of the next year for his first goal, which came against Albacete. He received Spanish citizenship in 2005, so that he could play in the Europe- an Champions League. He said that could only see himself
rection. The Catalans easily let go of players who were loyal to them for a long time, spending hun- dreds of millions of euros to bring in new players, without concrete results. That’s why he asked to be transferred last summer, but
the club didn’t let him go. Two clubs are still se- riously interested in signing him – Man- chester City and Paris Saint-Germain, which are the only ones capa- ble of spending a for- tune on his contract.
at one club - Barcelona. However, that situa- tion has changed in the last 12 months, because Leo believes that Barca isn’t devel- oping in the right di-
Sporting greats » Velikani sporta | 109
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