As Argentina has won the football worldcup after 36 years, everyone is talking about the hero, the leader of this victory, Lionel Messi. And we at havi.co thought, why not to dig down the journey of this extra ordinary hero and a all time great performer.
And what we have found is it takes 30 years for Messi to become The Messi.
Let’s look at the story of Lionel Messi.
Born in Argentina, June 24 1987
Started playing at age 5. He was always the shortest in the team and class, not much favorable in the sport.
Started playing for the youth team of Newell’s Old boys club at age 8. Later he was diagnosed with deficiency of growth hormone of which the family could not afford the treatment for long.
At Age 13 Messi joined FC Barcelona under 14 team as the club offered to bear the expenses of the treatment. Messi scored 21 goals in 14 games.
At age 16 Messi joined the Barcelona official team and became the youngest player and the goal scorer in Spanish La Liga.
In 2008, at age 21, he remained second to Cristiano Ronaldo to become FIFA world player of the year.
And next year, at age 22, he won FIFA player of the year by a record margin.
In season 2009-10 Messi won golden shoe award and FIFA player of the year award again. And again in 2011, for the 3rd consecutive time.
In the year 2012, he became Barcelona’s all time leading scorer in La Liga. He broke the 39 year old record of single season goals by scoring 73 goals in one season. In this year only, he won his 4th FIFA player of the year (renamed to Ballon d’Or award). Only player to win 4 times, that too, consecutive 4 times.
Image Credit: football-espana.net/
In year 2015, Messi won the Ballon d’Or award for the 5th time. In 2019 the sixth time and in 2021 the 7th time. That’s a world record.
He is second to Ronaldo in the number of goals by a very small margin. But leads the number of assists with a huge difference as you can see from these stats. And that puts Messi on a different level, a superhero as an individual but a highly committed team player and a leader.
Messi has played the most minutes in World Cup history: 2,314. He broke Paolo Maldini’s record of 2,217 minutes in the Qatar 2022 final. Messi is also the only player in history who has scored a world cup goal as a teen, in his 20s and 30s.
2014 Single handedly pulled the Argentina team into the finals of FIFA World Cup but lost to Germany. Messi won the golden ball award in this tournament.
In 2016 Argentina lost the 3rd consecutive final of an international tournament and Messi announced his retirement from international football with a sheer disappointment of not helping his country win an international title. But pulled it back in less than 2 months and started playing again.
And finally in 2022 he did it. Achieved the last unachieved milestone of his life by winning the Football world cup for Argentina. He had scored 8 goals in the tournament, 2 in final. And he became the only person in history to win the golden ball award twice.
