The story · a five-minute read
Before the records and the 48 trophies there was a small boy in a river city, a grandmother, a paper napkin and a very long road. The story, in nine scenes.
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Lionel Messi was born on June 24, 1987 in Rosario, a river city in central Argentina, and grew up in a neighborhood called La Bajada.
His father, Jorge, worked at a steel plant. His mother, Celia, worked in a magnet workshop.
His grandmother, also named Celia, took him to watch his older brother play for Grandoli, a neighborhood club. One day the team was a player short for a game of six-year-olds. The coach said Lionel was too young.
She insisted.
He lost control of the first ball that came to him. Then he scored, depending on who tells it, two or three goals.
At seven he joined Newell’s Old Boys, one of Rosario’s two big clubs, and put on its red-and-black shirt.
His youth team was so hard to beat that it became known as the Machine of ’87, after the year the boys were born.
The goals he’s credited with at Newell’s, one mark each.
Almost 500, by the usual count.
His grandmother died in 1998, shortly before his 11th birthday. When he points to the sky after a goal, it’s for her.
Around the same time, doctors found that his body wasn’t making enough growth hormone. He was far smaller than the other boys.
The treatment was an injection in the leg, every night. He gave them to himself.
It was reported to cost roughly $1,000 a month. His father’s insurance ran out after two years.
Newell’s agreed to help, then backed out. River Plate offered to step in, but he has said Newell’s wouldn’t release him.
In September 2000 he flew to Barcelona for a trial. The club liked what it saw, then stalled for months.
On December 14, at a tennis club in the city, Barcelona’s Carles Rexach and two go-betweens signed a paper napkin promising to take him.
In 2024 the napkin sold at auction for £762,400.
Barcelona agreed to pay for his treatment, and the family moved to Spain in February 2001.
In time his mother and siblings went back to Rosario. He stayed with his father, an ocean from home.
He played his first game for Barcelona in October 2004, at 17, and scored his first goal the following May. He stayed for seventeen seasons.
Barcelona won almost everything: 35 trophies, among them 10 league titles and 4 Champions Leagues. In 2011–12 he scored 73 goals, the most anyone has scored in a European season.
In 2021 the club ran out of money to keep him. He cried through his farewell press conference, then spent two seasons at Paris Saint-Germain, winning the league twice and a super cup.
Since 2023 he has played for Inter Miami, in the United States. He won a trophy within a month of arriving, and four in three years, including the 2025 MLS Cup, the league’s championship.
That’s 42 trophies with his clubs. The other six were with Argentina, and those took the longest.
Every major tournament he played for his country, in one chart.
It started well: a U-20 World Cup at 18, scoring both goals in the final, and Olympic gold at 21.
Then the senior team kept falling short. At the 2006 World Cup he was left on the bench as Argentina went out in the quarter-finals. In 2007 came the first lost final, 3–0 to Brazil in the Copa América.
Two more quarter-finals: crushed 4–0 by Germany in 2010, with Maradona as coach, and out on penalties in 2011, at home.
2014. A World Cup final in the Maracanã, and Germany scored in extra time, in the 113th minute. He was named the tournament’s best player, and the photo of him walking past the trophy became famous.
Two more finals, both against Chile, both lost on penalties. In 2016 he missed his penalty and said that night that his national-team career was over. Weeks later he changed his mind.
2018: out in the last 16, outrun by a 19-year-old Mbappé. 2019: a semi-final, lost to Brazil.
Then, in 2021, at the Maracanã, against Brazil: the Copa América. Argentina’s first senior trophy in 28 years, and his first.
2022: the Finalissima against Italy at Wembley, then the World Cup. The final against France finished 3–3. He scored twice, Argentina won on penalties, and he was 35.
2024: the Copa América again. He limped off injured in the final and sobbed on the bench as Lautaro Martínez scored the winner in extra time.
2026: one more World Cup final, at 39, with 8 goals in the tournament. Spain scored in extra time. He said the wound would take time to heal.
That October he said goodbye to Argentina in Buenos Aires, in front of more than 80,000 people.
21 years · 208 caps · 126 goals
When Diego Maradona died in November 2020, Messi scored against Osasuna, took off his Barcelona shirt and showed the red-and-black No. 10 of Newell’s: the shirt Maradona once wore there. He was shown a yellow card and fined €600.
In La Bajada, near the house he grew up in, a mural from 2021 calls him “from another galaxy and from my neighbourhood.”
The career page lays all of it out: every season, every trophy, every final. The watch lists tell you which matches to find.
Childhood stories get retold, so some details vary. Accounts put him at 4 to 6 at Grandoli and at 6 or 7 when he joined Newell’s, and they differ on exactly how Newell’s stepped back and what the treatment cost. The injection grid is an illustration of “every night for two years”, not a record. Sources: AP · ESPN · Irish Times · beIN · NBC News · Khaleej Times · Sky Sports · Wikipedia. The tournament and trophy figures are the ones on the career page, where their sources are listed.
Drawings by the site. An unofficial, non-commercial fan project, not affiliated with Lionel Messi or any club, league or federation. Spot a mistake? Email corrections@boyfromrosario.org.