Lionel Messi, a world-renown soccer player who plays for FC Barcelona in Spain. Lionel was born in Rosario, Argentina on June 24th, 1987. He was born in to a family that was not well off. However, He in a sense was born with a ball at his feet. His parents in an interview about their son on Canal TV in Spain(the ESPN of sports) said he started playing with a ball since he was about 2 years old. At 5 years old he started to play in youth leagues and eventually at the age of 8 in 1995, joined his first official club in his hometown called "Newell's Old Boys." Many of his youth coaches described him of having technique and skills well beyond his years. As the years went on many teams in Europe that had scouts based in several South American countries started to take note of a small kid who was breezing through the competition that he was facing. Messi however was known to be a great youth player but he had two major knocks that European clubs view as huge negatives to signing players, his size, and height. His family and peers also noticed this and at the age of 11 he was diagnosed to have a growth hormone deficiency in his body. He needed to have treatments such as daily injections to give the body the hormone he was lacking. Messi's father construction company paid for these treatments for 2 years, but due to eventual complications, they couldn't afford to pay for Lionel's treatments. Which were equal to about 1,500 US dollars every month. Leo's parents looked for the club he was playing for at the time and asked to pay for it but Newell's refused. The Messi family then looked for other clubs in Argentina that they could have their soon play for, he was wanted but almost all of the big teams in the country, but they wouldn't accept due to his potential liability of a medical condition. Thus along came FC Barcelona in 2000. They heard about Messi due to their scouts in Argentina and arranged a 2 week trial to train at at the club's youth facility.
