The Flea from Rosario: The Lionel Messi Story

Lionel Andrés Messi was born at 3:17 a.m. on June 24, 1987, in the Hospital Italiano Garibaldi in Rosario, Argentina’s third-largest city and a gritty industrial port on the Paraná River. His mother, Celia María Cuccittini, had worked the night shift cleaning offices and barely made it to the delivery room. Jorge Horacio Messi, a steelworker with calloused hands and a quiet intensity, paced the hallway clutching a small crucifix. When the nurse handed him the newborn—barely 3 kilograms, with a tuft of dark hair and eyes that seemed to track the ceiling lights—Jorge whispered, “Este pibe va a ser diferente.” This kid is going to be different. The Messis lived in a modest brick house on Lavalleja Street in Barrio La Bajada, a neighborhood of narrow alleys, dusty lots, and the constant clang of the nearby Acindar steel mill. Jorge earned 300 pesos a month—enough for rent, rice, and milanesas, but little else. Celia took in laundry and cleaned houses to stretch the budget. The couple already had two boys, Rodrigo (born 1980) and Matías (1982), and a daughter, Maria Sol, would arrive in 1993. Leo, the third child, was the quiet one who followed his brothers everywhere, especially to the empty lot across the street where they kicked a plastic ball until the streetlights flickered on. First Touches Leo’s first documented kick came at eighteen months, when he toddled after a half-deflated ball in the living room and struck it cleanly with his left foot. Celia laughed, but Jorge’s eyes narrowed—he had played amateur football in his youth and recognized instinct when he saw it. By age three, Leo refused to nap unless a ball was tucked under his arm. Neighbors recall him dribbling through the legs of older kids in the alley, his oversized T-shirt flapping like a cape. “He didn’t run,” one said. “He floated.” In 1991, at four years old, Leo joined Grandoli, a neighborhood club founded by a local priest. The team trained on a concrete pitch behind the parish church; the goals were painted pipes, and the ball was often patched with duct tape. Jorge became an assistant coach, partly to keep costs down, partly to watch his son. Leo’s first match was against a team of six-year-olds. He scored five goals, all with his left foot, and cried when the referee blew the final whistle because he wanted to keep playing. The coach, Salvador Aparicio, later said, “I had to invent rules to stop him—only three touches, no shooting from midfield. Otherwise, the game was unfair.” The Flea Earns His Name Grandoli’s yellow-and-black jersey hung to Leo’s knees. Opponents towered over him, yet he slalomed past them with a low center of gravity and an uncanny ability to shield the ball with his body. Teammates started calling him “La Pulga”—The Flea—because he was tiny, impossible to catch, and left itchy welts of embarrassment on defenders. The nickname stuck. Even referees used it. “¡Cuidado con La Pulga!” they’d shout as Leo collected the ball on the halfway line. Off the pitch, Leo was shy to the point of muteness. He spoke little at school, preferring to draw footballers in the margins of his notebooks. Teachers noted his perfect attendance on match days and his habit of arriving with grass stains on his knees before classes began. At home, dinner conversations revolved around tactics. Jorge sketched formations on napkins; Rodrigo and Matías argued over who would mark the opposition’s tallest striker. Leo listened, wide-eyed, absorbing everything. Early Signs of Something Greater By 1992, word of the five-year-old prodigy reached Abanderado Grandoli, a rival club with a slightly better pitch. They invited Leo for a trial. He arrived clutching his mother’s hand, wearing boots two sizes too big—hand-me-downs from Matías. In a twenty-minute scrimmage, he scored seven goals and set up three more. The coach offered him a spot on the under-10 team. Jorge declined; Leo was still four. Instead, they agreed to let him train twice a week with the older boys, provided he didn’t play official matches yet. That same year, Leo’s grandmother Celia—his mother’s mother and his fiercest cheerleader—began attending every session. She sat on a plastic chair at the sideline, knitting scarves in Grandoli colors and shouting “¡Vamos, Leo!” until her voice cracked. Years later, Messi would say her belief in him was the wind beneath his wings. When she died in 1998, he began pointing to the sky after every goal in her memory. The Shadow on the Horizon Physically, Leo remained undersized. At six, he was the shortest in his first-grade class, barely reaching the teacher’s waist. Doctors reassured the family it was normal for late bloomers, but Jorge noticed Leo tiring faster than his brothers after long kickabouts. A routine checkup in early 1994 revealed the first red flag: blood tests showed abnormally low levels of growth hormone. The pediatrician referred them to an endocrinologist in Buenos Aires, a six-hour bus ride away. The diagnosis—growth hormone deficiency—was confirmed months later, but treatment costs loomed like a storm cloud. For now, though, the streets of Rosario were Leo’s kingdom, and the ball at his feet was the only medicine he needed. In these formative years, no one—not Jorge, not Celia, not even the wide-eyed kids chasing shadows in the alley—could have predicted that the boy in the oversized jersey would one day carry a nation’s hopes. But every left-footed feint, every goal scraped past a rusted goalpost, was a brick in the foundation of a legend. The Flea was learning to fly.