ANYTIME over the last twenty years that half decent Argentinian youngster comes to the fore, he’s immediately been dubbed ‘the new Maradona’. Players such as Ariel Ortega, Carlos Marinelli, Andres D’Alessandro and Javier Saviola are just some of the poor souls that have been burdened with the tag and not lived up to the hype.

Today in 2004 saw the Barcelona debut of perhaps the closest player we’ve got to El Diego yet, when Lionel Messi took the field for Los Cules against their local rivals Espanyol.

Barcelona had snapped Messi up from Newell’s Old Boys as a thirteen year old after he had been diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency. River Plate were also after the highly promising youngster, but neither they nor Newell’s Old Boys could afford to pay the £500 a month that Messi required for his growth deficiency. Barca stepped in to foot the bill so long as he moved over to Spain.

When Messi made his debut in Barca’s 1-0 win at Espanyol the 17-year-old was the third youngest player to ever turn out for the side and the youngster to ever play in the La Liga. He would also break the record for the league’s youngest ever scorer later that season. During the next couple of seasons Messi slotted immediately into the Barca side, forming an excellent partnership with Ronaldinho, before the Brazilian’s fast-living ways had an effect on his football.



He was also building up a reputation for excellent goals and as a big-game player. Never was this more evident that in Barca’s El Clasico clash against Real Madrid at Camp Nou in the 2006/07 season when he bagged a hat-trick for ten-men Barcelona in the pulsating 3-3 draw. Barca fell behind three times, but the young Argentine almost single-handily dragged them back, with his injury-time equaliser meaning he had become the first player since Madrid’s Ivan Zamorano to bag a treble in world football’s biggest club game.

He’s also been doing it on the international stage. In 2006 he became the youngest Argentine to feature in the World Cup and would win the Young Player of the Tournament in the 2007 Copa America. This summer the boy wonder was strutting his stuff for the Albicelestes in the Olympics, playing some sublime football, along with two other ‘new Maradona’s’, Juan Roman Riquelme and Sergio Aguero. Whilst he made not be fathering Maradona’s grandchild like Aguero, the great man himself has dubbed Messi as ‘my successor’.

See Messi doing his best Diego impression here and check out what else was going on in the world of football here.

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