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It’s been 11 years since a 17-year-old fragile, lanky boy from Rosario, Argentina made his official debut for one of the biggest clubs of the world. Yes, the name of the boy was Lionel Messi and the club was FC Barcelona. And here we are 11 years later, that very boy is now a worldwide sensation and is widely regarded as the best player the world has ever seen, with four Ballon d'Or awards to his name already.
Messi started his football career at Newell's Old Boys which is based in Rosario, Argentina in 1995, where he played for 5 years. At the age of 13, his next step was Barcelona, where he joined the La Masia, the famed youth academy of Barcelona. His progress through the club’s ranks was nothing less than spectacular.
He raced on from the Barca C team to Barca B, and within a year he was handed his debut for the first team against Porto on November 16, 2003. As it was a friendly match to mark the opening of Porto’s new Dragao stadium, it was not considered as his official debut.
Fast forward to October 16, 2004. Barcelona’s manager Frank Rijkaard had as many as four first team players sidelined due to injury. As a result, Rijkaard had to turn to his reserve team players for the Catalan derby against Espanyol. Messi, who was handed the number 30 jersey, came on with 8 minutes to go in the game replacing the iconic Portuguese Deco.
At 17 years, 3 months and 22 days, Messi became the second youngest player to wear the famous blue and red colours of the Catalan club, after Paulino Alcántara.
On May 1, 2005, the Argentine forward became the youngest player ever to score a league goal for FC Barcelona and the rest as they say, is history. He has helped his club win various accolades, which includes seven La Liga titles and four Champions League trophies.
Thus far, Lionel Messi has scored 418 goals for Barcelona, more than anyone in the history of The Blaugranas. He is La Liga’s top scorer with 289 goals in 321 appearances with the club. He also broke Raul’s Champions League goal scoring record of 71 goals back in November, only for his great rival Cristiano Ronaldo to overtake him.
But, with Messi’s age(28) on his side he might just go on to set even greater milestones, where rest can only dream of reaching.
We leave you with a video of that fateful debut of Lionel Messi released by FC Barcelona:
