The framed napkin on which Lionel Messi’s informal Barcelona contract was written by Charly Rexach in December 2000. Rexach pulled out a serviette 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.” On 14 December 2000, he met for lunch with Minguella and Gaggioli at the Pompeia tennis club. “His dad was getting angry and said Leo was leaving,” Rexach later told the sports daily AS. Other clubs were interested, Messi’s agents warned, clubs such as Real Madrid. The original agreement had been laid down early but nothing had actually happened. As he played, his father waited and waited. But it was no foregone conclusion that Messi would get there certainly not for Barça. From the windows of the Rallye, you can see the Camp Nou barely 50 yards away. Messi moved into the Hotel Rallye and from there to a flat on the Gran Vía de Carlos III with his family. In the dressing room, they often referred to him as el mudo, the mute one. A foreigner, Messi could not play with the Juvenil A team and was initially able to play only in Catalan competition. And the £40,000 they agreed to pay Jorge Messi annually was a lot of money some thought it too much for a player so young about whom there could be no guarantees. That was not cheap at almost $1,000 a month. They had to pay for the hormone treatment that, painfully, Messi injected into his legs every day. But in 2000, you didn’t just sign a 13-year-old and certainly not a 13-year-old from Argentina. And as for Messi, he was special, sure, a player they thought would make it to the first team. Joan Gaspart had become president that summer, Luís Figo had left for Real Madrid, and Barcelona were in crisis. ![]() Rexach starts to explain how Messi came to find the perfect environment at Barcelona how it all seems so natural these days. Then he adds: “Anyone would have said the same.” It took him seven or eight minutes to get round and by the time he arrived, his mind was made up: “We have to sign this kid right now.” “After two minutes, I knew,” Rexach says. He arrived with the game under way and strolled round the pitch to take up his place, first behind the goal and then on one of the benches. A game was arranged for the start of October so that the technical secretary could be there. Messi impressed and he stayed until Rexach returned. That day, Rexach was at the Olympic Games in Sydney. In the dressing room, they looked at him and could not believe how small he was on the pitch, they looked at him and couldn’t believe how good he was. ![]() Messi did not reach five feet and he changed in silence. The following day, Messi trained with the Barcelona youth team, Cesc Fàbregas and Gerard Piqué among them. They put Messi up in the Hotel Plaza, at the foot of Montjuïc, where escalators head up the hill to the Olympic stadium. Minguella knew: he was the one who had brought Maradona to Barcelona 20 years earlier. Minguella had told Rexach, Barcelona’s technical director, that this kid was like Diego Maradona. Together with Josep Maria Minguella, they had arranged for Messi to have a trial at Barcelona. Messi, aged 13, was flying across the Atlantic with his father, Jorge, and Fabián Soldini, the player’s agent and Gaggioli’s partner. On Sunday, 17 September 2000, Gaggioli was waiting for Messi at El Prat airport in Barcelona. Every now and then he takes it out and shows it off carefully. Horacio Gaggioli still has the serviette hidden away somewhere, although there have been calls to place it in Barcelona’s museum. ![]() No, Rexach says he will go down in Barcelona’s history because one day he signed Lionel Messi – on a serviette. But that’s not why he says he will go down in history. He played for the first team for 17 years and has been coach, assistant coach, technical director and presidential adviser. Born and raised in Pedralbes, the smart neighbourhood that lies up the hill from the Camp Nou, Rexach joined Barcelona at the age of 12 and he has spent almost half a century there, on and off. “I’ll go down in Barcelona’s history,” he says.
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