2013 60 MINUTES How Messi overcame a childhood growth

2013 60 MINUTES How Messi overcame a childhood growth deficiency Do you remember when your son kicked his first soccer ball? Yes, I remember that. He was 3 years old. In Argentina, the first present you give to a boy is a football. This is where he learned the game, where these kids are playing today - on the street where he lived. He joined the local club, Newell's Old Boys. He was 8. He didn't shine in class, but on the field, he was already practicing magic. He was the best on the team, a star, but a little star, smaller than life. There was something wrong. He just wasn't growing. He had a serious problem, didn't he? He was short because he had a hormone deficiency. Leo needed treatment. It was expensive, the equivalent of his father's monthly salary, and no Argentinean team was about to invest in a preteen with a medical problem. But word of this curious prodigy was spreading to Europe. He and his father were invited to fly to Barcelona. Carles Rexach, the team's sporting director, was asked to check him out. When I got there, I said, “You’ve got to sign him. That kid is different from everyone else.” But club executives weren't sure, said there are plenty of good local boys around, why pay big bucks to bring an undersized who needed medical treatment and his whole family across the ocean? But Barca's sporting director was adamant: He sat Lionel's father down and made sporting history. You're in a restaurant. I asked for a piece of paper and a pen, but they didn't have paper, I just wrote the contract on a napkin.