Messi, Rosario and Newell’s: The love between a superstar, his hometown and boyhood club

Horacio Gaggioli waited at Barcelona’s El Prat Airport. His business partners in Buenos Aires were on a flight heading his way, along with a 13-year-old boy named Lionel Messi and his father, Jorge.

A year earlier, Gaggioli had been sent a video tape of Lionel playing for the youth teams of Argentinian soccer club Newell’s Old Boys. Today, those grainy highlights have been seen by millions on YouTube but, more than 20 years ago, Messi’s mesmerizing skills as a child were unknown to anybody outside of his home town Rosario. 

Gaggioli, an Argentinian player agent, was now serving as an intermediary between his partners in Argentina, who had discovered Messi, and FC Barcelona, a reluctant European suitor. It was September of 2000 and Messi had arrived for a two-week trial with the Catalan club. 

“When those of us who lived in Barcelona saw Messi’s videos, we were very surprised by what the kid could do,” Gaggioli tells The Athletic from his home in Andorra. “We knew right away that he was a different type of player.” 

But what Gaggioli saw on video contrasted with his first impressions of Messi in person. Gaggioli knew that Messi had been seen by a pediatric endocrinologist (a glands and hormones specialist) in Argentina. He knew the young Messi had growth issues and that a club willing to sign him would have to pay for his expensive growth hormone treatment. 

Nonetheless, when Gaggioli saw Messi for the first time at the airport, he thought he had made a terrible mistake. 

“I thought I had been duped,” Gaggioli says. “I thought to myself: ‘This small child can’t play football. He’s tiny. His leg looked like a finger. They’re going to break this kid’s legs.’

Advertisement

“But the next day he began to train with