Video evidence of Lionel Messi's decade-old napkin contract

On Dec 14, 2000, a 13-year-old Lionel Messi, who was only slightly not as large as well as a shade less extraordinary than he is now, hurriedly signed a single of universe football's many critical contracts upon a restaurant napkin. The Telegraph tells a whimsical (and true!) tale:

Messi made a large impression upon that initial revisit as a 13-year-old, running rings around a large kids in Bara's already superb girl teams as well as his father threatened to fly him back home if a bar didn't sign him true away. So Charly Rexach, a club's sporting director, called for a bartender during their restaurant meeting as well as scribbled a contract upon what right away hangs in Messi's lawyer's office as a many distinguished paper napkin in sporting history.

"He is priceless now," beams Rexach.

Just think where Messi might be currently if his father hadn't been so pushy. Would he be in a Premier League, removing his legs savagely broken by challenges from Karl Henry as well as Nigel De Jong? Would he still be in Argentina, mostly unknown to a northern hemisphere as well as only rated a 79 in FIFA 11? Would he be during Real Madrid? Or, less interestingly, would he have signed for Barcelona in a more traditional as well as in accord with manner multiform days later? The universe will never know!

That napkin (0:33 into a video) is already a single of a many critical papers in sports history, though. Far more critical than a beach towel Harry Redknapp wrote upon in 1996 to remind himself not to caring about tactics.

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