FC Barcelona skipper Luis Lionel Andres Messi was born on 24th June 1987 in Rosario, Argentina. He was born into a middle-class Italian family. Messi is the second richest football player in the world with a net worth of 180 million dollars. The star footballer is happily married to his childhood sweetheart Antonella Roccuzzo since 2017 and is a father to three sons: Thiago Messi, Mateo Messi and Ciro Messi. Now we will tell you some of his amazing unknown facts.<\/p>\n
1. Messi was suffering from Growth Hormone Deficiency in childhood<\/strong><\/p>\n Messi was diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency at the age of 11. His father couldn\u2019t afford his treatment price of 900 dollars per month. Messi signed the first contract at the age of 13 with FC Barcelona and shifted to Spain and the football club agreed to pay for his treatment.<\/p>\n 2. Messi\u2019s first contract<\/strong><\/p>\n His first contract was written on a paper napkin.<\/p>\n 3. First football club<\/strong><\/p>\n Lionel was part of the \u2018Baby Dream Team\u2019 and was the top scorer with 36 goals in 30 games<\/p>\n 4. Debut<\/strong><\/p>\n He made his debut for FC Barcelona on November 16, 2003, and was the youngest player to ever score for Barcelona.<\/p>\n 5. Offer he denied<\/strong><\/p>\n Messi was chosen by the Royal Spanish Football Federation to join the Spanish Football Team, which he declined.<\/p>\n 6. Two passports<\/strong><\/p>\n FC Barcelona captain Lionel Messi holds two passports \u2013 Argentina\u2019s and Spain\u2019s.<\/p>\n 7. His reason for the Number 10 jersey<\/strong><\/p>\n Messi had inherited the number 10 Barca jersey from another great footballer Ronaldinho in the summer of 2008.<\/p>\n 8. His first award<\/strong><\/p>\n Messi won his first Ballon d\u2019Or and FIFA World Player of the Year awards in 2009.<\/p>\n 9. His social work<\/strong><\/p>\n He is the founder of the organization named Leo Messi Foundation which helps in providing children with the best opportunities for education and health care. He is a Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF. Messi has also donated 600,000 euros towards the refurbishment of a children\u2019s hospital in his hometown of Rosario, Argentina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FC Barcelona skipper Luis Lionel Andres Messi was born on 24th June 1987 in Rosario, Argentina. He was born into\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":32790,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[660,238,1826,984,1825,1827,1828,773,729],"class_list":["post-10282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-argentina","tag-fc-barcelona","tag-federation-international-football-association","tag-fifa","tag-lional-messi","tag-ronaldinho","tag-royal-spanish-football-federation","tag-spain","tag-unicef"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}