After Lionel Messi joined Barcelona at the age of 13, the club agreed to cover hormone treatments for him at almost $1,000 per month and to help his father, Jorge Messi, find a job that would pay at least £40,000 per year.

A foreigner, Messi could not play with the Juvenil A team and was initially able to play only in Catalan competition.

Messi began playing but his father had to wait and wait for the job to materialize.

Other clubs were interested, Messi’s agents warned, clubs such as Real Madrid.

“His dad was getting angry and said Leo was leaving,” Barcelona's then-technical director Charly Rexach later told the sports daily AS. On 14 December 2000, he met for lunch with Minguella and Gaggioli at the Pompeia tennis club. “We’ll go elsewhere,” Gaggioli told him. Rexach pulled out a table napkin from the little plastic holder and started scribbling: “I, Charly Rexach, in my capacity as technical secretary for FC Barcelona, and despite the existence of some opinions against it, commit to signing Lionel Messi as long as the conditions agreed are met.”

There had been arguments at the boardroom level against investing so heavily in a 13-year-old, particularly with Barcelona's first team struggling at the time. Barça wouldn't win anything until 04-05.

Six months later Jorge Messi wrote to the club president because he had not been paid and the family situation was, he said, “very serious”. Messi’s official international transfer wouldn’t arrive until August. And that summer, Messi’s mother and three siblings returned to Argentina. Leo was asked if he wanted to join them. He insisted on staying. He was determined to make it. In December 2001 he signed a new contract with Barcelona.