Messi: Making the GOAT
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2024
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to the latest episode of The Overlap’s football history podcast, It Was What It Was.
This week, our hosts Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper dive into the extraordinary journey of Lionel Messi, widely regarded as the greatest footballer of all time.
With his 2022 World Cup triumph marking the pinnacle of an already legendary career, Jonathan and Rob take a journey back to Messi’s beginnings.
They explore his childhood in Rosario, the crucial role his family played in his development, and his time at Newell's Old Boys, where he faced and overcame a growth hormone deficiency that almost ended his dream before it began.
In this episode of It Was What It Was, they delve into his life-changing move to Barcelona at just 13, joining the iconic Class of '87 alongside future stars like Cesc Fàbregas and Gerard Piqué, where Messi would go on to become the greatest player in the club’s storied history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In Barcelona, on the 14th of December 2000, in the presence of Messrs. Mingella and O'Aasio, |
| 0:13.0 | Carlos Reschak, FC Barcelona's sporting director, hereby agrees under his responsibility |
| 0:17.9 | and regardless of any dissenting opinions to sign the player |
| 0:21.4 | Lionel Messi provided that we keep to the amounts agreed upon. |
| 0:26.0 | I'm Jonathan Wilson and with Rob Draper and that was the text written on a napkin in a tennis |
| 0:31.3 | club in Barcelona that confirmed that Barcelona would sign the 13-year-old Lionel Messi. |
| 0:37.9 | And that's really, in a sense, the end of the story we're telling in today's episode, |
| 0:42.0 | because we're going to be talking about the origin story of Lionel Messi, |
| 0:45.0 | where he came from and Rosario, how he got to Barcelona. |
| 0:48.0 | And that moment, that meeting, that very impromptu contract, |
| 0:53.3 | I mean, it was notarised, but almost certainly not legally binding. |
| 0:56.9 | That really is one of football's greatest sliding doors moments. |
| 1:00.9 | What if that napkin hadn't been signed? |
| 1:03.3 | Because Barcelona were dragging their feet on trying to sign him. |
| 1:05.5 | They weren't certain, but they did. |
| 1:08.0 | And that led to their years of great dominance and Messi becoming probably the greatest |
| 1:12.2 | way we've ever seen. |
| 1:13.5 | So is that the greatest sliding doors moment in football for you, Rob? |
| 1:16.9 | We love a sliding doors moment. |
| 1:18.3 | And I do think this is pivotal. |
| 1:20.7 | I mean, as we're going to see in this podcast, it could have gone either way. |
| 1:25.4 | Because particularly in those days, no one really signs a 13-year-old. |
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