The lesser-known details of how Lionel Messi faced his growth problems

"If you come to offer us a youth player who is less than 1.80m tall, turn around". The sign hanging above the coaches' door in Barcelona towards the end of the 80s he was a censor, a smasher of hopes, a repellent of potential stars. Symptom of another football and a philosophy that today seems alien to the Catalan club. It was Johan Cruyff who gave the order, in his role as leader, to pick up that painting. To usher in a new era for the club. "He said that what matters is talent and that height does not matter"recalled the renowned trainer of The farmhouse Laureano Ruiz in the prestigious documentary Take the ball, pass the ball which premiered in 2018 and reviews the club's most glorious era Blaugrana under the command of Josep Guardiola, a direct disciple of the flying Dutchman.

Cruyff had returned to the Catalan club in May 1988 but this time with the long overcoat and without hiding his cigarettes. The stage as a brilliant footballer was past and now it was time to reorder the ideas in a giant club that lacked the most important brightness in its showcases. Perhaps that determination he made during his first days of the eight seasons that he remained as technical director was the beginning of the love story of Lionel Messi with the Blaugrana. Although, of course, at that time Leo had just completed his first year of life in Rosario and there was only one certainty: he would be a fan of Newell’s Old Boys. Nobody would suspect that his first cuddles with a ball would transform him into one of the legends of soccer, and much less, there were still suspicions of his growth problems.

In the Messi's house in the south of Rosario, located in a neighborhood of narrow streets that may well have been their school at the time of the fine gambeta, they only learned of the problem at age 10. The love for soccer was evident because he had a ball attached to his body since he started walking. Where he was going, she was going. But there was still a long way to go to project it as a bizarre promise. Already in Grandoli, where he started playing at the age of five following in the footsteps of his brothers Rodrigo and Matías, it could be suspected that height would be a problem in his life. Or, rather, an improvement impulse.

Although the first warning light came already in the inferiors of Newell’s. In the comparison with his peers, Leo was visibly shorter and they recommended consulting with endocrinologist Diego Schwarzstein: “That height difference seen in the videos of when he is 9 years old, before the start of treatment, is the difference that would have sustained. That difference you would see with a guy who measures 1.75 meters. An unsubstituted growth hormone robs a boy a few inches, between 10 and 15 approximately. If I read today measures 1.70M, without the treatment it would have measured maximum 1.60M"Explained the Rosario doctor in dialogue with Infobae. “He is a boy who had a deficit of a hormone that is essential to grow normally. These hormones only serve what is lacking. It is not a treatment to be tall, it is to cover a deficit"He added.

That baby 10 years, What do you mean 1.25MHe knew that the treatment proposed by the specialist was the only key to achieving his dream of being a professional soccer player. The almighty man on a playing field perhaps began to forge his personality at that moment, when he realized that every day he had to face the fear and pain – greater or less, but pain at last – of injecting himself into his legs. Once a day, religiously, he had to perform the ritual. "Hormones are injected into a device very similar to the one a diabetic uses to inject insulin. It is usually put on before sleep. If you ask me if I want to give myself an injection every day, I say no. But this is applied with finite, super sharp needles, which generate some minimal discomfort, ”explained Schwarzstein.

"Once a night I was pricking the growth hormone. He was changing legs. First one, then another. I was not impressed, at first my mom or dad would wear it. Each night. Until I learned and I was doing it alone. It was a very small needle, you went in and loaded the amount that had to prick me. It was already routine, "recalled the footballer a few years ago about that time. “Wherever I went, I would take the syringe in a case and immediately put it in the fridge, if I went to a friend's house, for example. Then I grabbed and applied it to my quadriceps myself. Every night it was like that, "he added. A former teammate of his in inferiors, the talented Billy Rodas, specifically detailed that height difference: "He was very small in body, but on the court it was not noticeable at all".

While his father, then a worker responsible for supervising the production of barbed wire in the metallurgical factory Acindar, he was moving to get the mechanism that finances the treatment – and while the stories on this subject are controversial and contradictory – Leo saw the results: according to the book Messi mystery Sebastián Fest and Alexandre Juillard, their height was 1.32M in July 1998 at eleven years old and had glued a nine-centimeter stretch to the 1.41M for him 2000 already twelve years old.

At that time, Messi had carried out a test in the lower river In which he came to share an attack with Gonzalo Higuaín and found the hendija to make his name reach European football, which had just lived a recent history with the hiring of the 11-year-old Argentinean Leandro Depetris by Milan in January 2000. The family, who had already agreed with the duo of representatives who managed their cousin Maximiliano Biancucchi to try to generate contacts in Spain, had a single obsession: getting the $ 960 that it was worth the treatment for that time where the Argentine economy was a peso / a dollar and about to fly through the air.

Between his close connection to the three years with the Rosario endocrinologist and his departure to join the inferiors of the Blaugrana in February 2001, Messi grew 23 centimeters thanks to the procedure that was applied. Although from the side of the Messi they always assured that the game was associated with the inability to pay for the young person's medical procedure –In conjunction with the obstacles that existed from the different institutions to finance the complication of the young person–, from the other side of the counter they denied in the mentioned book that such complexity existed. "For a year and a half we were helped by the social work and the Foundation of the company where I worked. However, afterwards the picture became complicated. We could have stopped the treatment, but they said it was not very convenient"Jorge Messi explained to The graphic over a decade ago. After all, his journey to the bottom of Barça is an unsolved mystery.

To all this, Barcelona promised to pay the entire treatment and in Spain it continued for a few more months under that regime. Although at the age of 15 he had to stop it according to the end of the growth stage: the reports of the time assure that grew 29 centimeters in 30 months until you reach your current height. There were some slight modifications there – "Every teacher has his little book", says Schwarzstein about what was done in Spain: he received a supplement for "Take care of the tendons" and held sessions with the aim of "Strengthen the cartilage of your knees", according to the Catalan doctor Josep Borrell, who died in 2013.

Today, the official page of Barcelona indicates that measures 1.70M, a stature that in any case would not have been enough to comply with the exclusive guideline demanded by that poster that Cruyff took down. A decision that changed the timeline in that fertile land of little talents that delivered other unacceptable to leave a mark on history: Andrés Iniesta, Xavi Hernández, Jordi Alba …