Lionel Andrés Messi celebrates his birthday again in the middle of a competition with the Argentine national team. The captain’s growth from when he played ball in the La Bajada neighborhood to his arrival in the MLS. In the middle, Barcelona, ​​PSG and their consecrations at the Maracaná and in the 2022 World Cup.

37 years have passed since that birth. On Wednesday, July 24, 1987, he was born at the Garibaldi Italian Hospital in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina, the great-grandson of an Italian man who set foot in remote lands in 1883. He weighed about three kilos and measured 47 centimeters. His zodiac sign is cancer and in the Chinese horoscope it is rabbit. He already had two brothers, Rodrigo and Matías. Even in the Messi family of father Jorge and mother Celia – he a factory employee, she a cleaning worker – a woman had not been born: later María Sol would arrive. She grew up in the La Bajada neighborhood kicking a ball. 37 years have passed since that beginning. The lives of many are not the same. That of the Argentines less so .

Lionel Andrés Messi celebrates his birthday again in the intimacy of a competition, far from the family he formed with his wife and three children, close to the family he formed with his friends and teammates. From the little guy from the Grandoli club to the monster that is the record for how many statistics he comes across wearing the Barcelona shirt or the Argentine national team.

The man from Rosario started at the age of five in the neighborhood club. The ball and his skills had an immediate crush. On March 30, 1994 he took the next step: he signed in the youth teams of Newell’s, the club he loved. There his name began to take importance little by little. A flea was unstoppable.

That nickname related to his height was also the one that marked his departure from Rosario and that left his dream of making his professional debut with the Leprosy shirt unfinished: Barcelona offered to pay for his treatment for growth problems when he was barely 13 years old. . Little by little, the story began to forge itself.

On October 16, 2004 he made his debut with the Catalan cast and on May 1, 2005, against Albacete, his first official shout came. Of course, before, on June 29, 2004, the Argentine national team had managed to secure a man who would be the leader of the team for decades to come: he debuted with the Albiceleste Sub 20 in a memorable friendly against Paraguay that only served to ensure that Messi was more Argentine than others, as if it were necessary.

What came next is history, it is a record and it is an emotional memory . He crossed the lives of hundreds of millions of people who grew up watching him win personal titles and trophies, and who wished that Barcelona, ​​Inter Miami or Argentina would not win, but that he would win. If what he did until 2022 had been monumental, what happened later in December of that year elevated him to the altar of the divinities. When he won the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the first thing he did was tell his family with an eloquent and universal gesture that he was already there, that he had achieved it, that he didn’t need anything else . He was deceived: he still needs to win, he still wants to win.

He no longer shares the hotel room where Argentina is concentrated with his friend Sergio Agüero but instead sleeps alone. He woke up this morning at the age of 37 in New Jersey, where the Argentine team that is competing in the Copa América will train at the Red Bull Arena ahead of Tuesday’s game, when they will face Chile starting at 10:00 p.m. at MetLife Stadium. A new goal for the birthday boy who already has in his history eight Ballon d’Or awards, four The Best awards, 34 conquests with Barcelona between leagues, national and continental super cups, King’s Cups, club World Cups and Champions Leagues, three with PSG , one with Inter Miami and the five with Argentina: 2005 U20 World Cup, the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Copa América 2021, Finalissima 2022 and the 2022 World Cup. At 37 years old, he is going for his 44th title .