"At the time, he was the latest 'new Maradona'. The most exciting teenager in world football, the star shining brightest in a Barcelona team that had begun rivalling Real Madrid's Galacticos status. Who said so? Maradona, ranked at no.3 in FourFourTwo's list of the greatest players of all time, for one. In 2005, Messi was not simply the flavour of the month, an over-hyped tabloid creation set to fade away as quickly as he'd risen to prominence."
"Six months prior to our meeting, Messi was just another hopeful playing for Barcelona's B team in front of crowds of 2,000 fans at best. Below is the original interview feature from the January 2006 edition of FourFourTwo, believed to be the first in-depth interview the great man ever gave to an English publication. This interview originally appeared in the Jan 2006 issue of FourFourTwo alongside an exclusive chat with Ronaldinho"
Diego Maradona compared Lionel Messi to himself, calling Messi the 'new Maradona' and insisting Messi was different from contemporaries like Pablo Aimar, Juan Román Riquelme and Andrés D'Alessandro. At 17 Messi had featured briefly for Barcelona's first team and became the club's youngest league scorer but had only 77 minutes of first-team action in 2004–05. Messi then starred at the 2005 Under-20 World Youth Championship, top-scoring with six goals and leading Argentina to the title. Barcelona president Joan Laporta hurried to improve Messi's contract amid interest from Real Madrid, Inter, Rangers and Milan, replacing a modest reserve team deal.
Read at www.fourfourtwo.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]