shorter today,” saidDrSchwarzstein. As a ten-year-old kid, who was then just 1.25 metres tall, he became a man overnight by realising that achieving his hopes of becoming a professional footballer would come through a lot of pain. Once a day, every day, he had to religiously performthe ritual of injecting himself 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 inmy 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,” saidMessi. 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 fromhis factory, peoplewho didn’t evenknowhimbut hadheard about his skills...The treatment was successful and Leo grew by 23 centimetres in three years. It was then that Barcelona entered the story, after having heard that akid the likes ofwhich theplanet 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”,wherehe impressedcoachCarlos Rexach so much that he was offered a contract written on a paper napkin, out of fear that hewould be snatched up by another club. Everything that followed has now gone down in football history. This Argentine-born kid of Italian-Spanish origins changed the rules of the world’s most popular sport. “Leo uses only his left foot and is thebest intheworld. Imaginehow big a problem we would be in if he also playedwith his right foot,” said Zlatan Ibrahimović once. Messi has been connected to Barcelona since the year 2000, while hemade his debut for the first team rection. The Catalans easily let go of players who were loyal to them for a long time, spending hundreds 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 seriously interested in signing him – Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, which are the only ones capable of spending a fortune on his contract. 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 Sporting greats » Velikani sporta | 109 on 16th October 2004 in the city derby against Espanyol. However, he had to wait until 1st 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 European Champions League. He said that could only see himself at one club - Barcelona. However, that situation has changed in the last 12 months, because Leo believes that Barca isn’t developing in the right di-
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