Lionel Messi: HGH and the making of an Argentine footballing legend
Lionel Messi’s talent was abundant as a child, but there was one thing preventing the boy from becoming a star. Paul Hirst reveals the intervention that created a legend.
Dr Diego Schwarzstein slides open the top drawer of his mahogany desk and pulls out a white rectangular box.
“Here it is,” he says, the sound of his commanding voice bouncing off the four walls of his modest office on Calle Italia in Rosario, Argentina.
From the box, he removes a marker pen-shaped object with a tiny syringe on the end of it. It is similar in appearance to the pens used by diabetics, except this one contains cartridges of human growth hormone (HGH) rather than insulin.
Schwarzstein remembers the day – January 31, 1997 – that he gave one of these pens to a local nine-year-old boy who measured about 4ft 2in.
“Leo asked me if he was going to grow enough to become a footballer,” Schwarzstein says. “I said to him, ‘Don’t worry, you will be taller than Maradona. I don’t know if you are going to be better than him, but you’ll be taller than him.’ ”
The Leo in question was Lionel Andres Messi, who was accompanied to the doctor’s surgery that day by his parents, Jorge and Celia.
Schwarzstein remembers Messi’s father and mother “reacting like any parent would” upon being told that their child had been diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency (GHD), a condition that affects one in 5,000 children. Those who have GHD essentially stop growing at three years old.
“They were unhappy and worried,” Schwarzstein, 58, says.
Lionel, the second youngest of their four children, was far more sanguine. In his eyes, the doctor had provided him with a solution to the only problem that he thought would prevent him from realising his dream of becoming a professional footballer.
By that point, Messi was already playing in the academy of Newell’s Old Boys, whom he had supported all his life, but he knew that he had to be much taller if he was going to take his career further. He was so short that his two elder brothers had started calling him “la pulgita” (little flea).
After injecting the HGH into his thigh each morning for the next five years, the treatment had the desired effect on Messi.
“I was right,” Schwarzstein, an expert in the field of endocrinology, says.
“Maradona was 1.67 metres [5ft 5in] tall and Leo ended up 1.69 metres [5ft 5 and a half inches]. That’s more or less what I predicted.”
Towards the end of 2000, the Messi family became annoyed at Newell’s reluctance to foot the bill for the $1,300-a-month treatment, and they started looking for a new club for their star in the making.
After running the rule over him in a trial, Barcelona were more than happy to sign the 13-year-old and pay for the treatment so Messi and his father moved to Catalonia.
Messi has never forgotten the role that Schwarzstein played in his rise from wannabe to seven-times Ballon d’Or winner. A few years ago, he invited the doctor’s son into the dressing room at Barcelona’s training ground after hearing that he was in the Catalonian capital.
Before Messi headed to Barcelona in the spring of 2001, he stopped off at the surgery with a present for Schwarzstein – the Newell’s jersey he wore on his final appearance for the club’s academy.
On the red-and-black shirt, which had No 9 on the back, Messi scribbled in black marker pen: “For Diego, with love from Leo Messi.”
Schwarzstein says: “There were a lot of suitors for that shirt, but he gave it to me, and that means a lot. It must be worth a lot of money.”
Given the role that Schwarzstein played in Messi’s career – and the affection that the forward feels for him – you would imagine that he is desperate to see his most famous patient lift the World Cup in Qatar on December 18.
But for the doctor, it is not that simple. “As a football fan, I would like Argentina to be champions,” he says. “As an Argentine citizen, as a human being, I would like them to lose all three games and be eliminated in the first round.
“Why? I’m convinced that this obscenely populist government that we have here would use the success of Argentina at the World Cup to cover things up. They could announce the devaluation of the currency on the day that the team play, when no one is focused on that.”
Under Alberto Fernandez’s government, inflation has rocketed to 83 per cent. Banks in Rosario routinely run out of money.
“I’ve lived through many crises in this country, but this is the worst,” Schwarzstein says. “The data from the government says that to not be poor you have to earn 120,000 Argentine pesos $1,100 per month. The minimum [monthly] wage is 60,000 pesos so even those who have work are poor.”
Many Rosarinos are starting to feel the pinch. One called Gustavo summed up the situation during an asado (an Argentine barbecue). “Today we eat meat, but tomorrow we’ll be having rice,” he says. The spike in poverty has led to a surge in gang-related violence in Messi’s home city, which is in the north east of Argentina, about 170 miles from Buenos Aires.
“There’s kids over there who won’t think twice about shooting you in the head for a thousand pesos,” a taxi driver in Argentina’s capital says. “It’s the city where there are more murders than anywhere else in Argentina.”
By the end of October, 239 violent deaths had been registered in Rosario – a record for the year even though it had two months left to run.
The latest victim was a woman who was hit by two stray bullets during a shootout between gangs as she sat outside her home sipping mate, a herbal-infused tea popular in South America.
The local health ministry recently launched an appeal for more doctors and nurses because many had left the profession due to threats from drug dealers who were annoyed that the medical staff had been unable to save their fellow gang members after shootouts.
Some of the shootings take place in and around the yellow high-rise flats on Calle Alice, in the southeast of the city. The flats were built by the local government, who wanted to help locals to get a foot on the housing ladder, but within a few years the drug traffickers, known as narcos, had taken over the block and now sell drugs from the flats instead.
Nearby stands an eerie black cabin full of skeleton-figurines that represent Santa Muerte, the Mexican folk saint of death. Hit men are said to visit the cabin before they carry out their operations as they believe the saint, revered by Mexican narcos, will give them good luck.
A couple of streets away is the dusty, undulating football pitch of Abanderado Grandoli, a local grassroots football club with 90 players ranging from four to thirteen years old.
On one Friday evening, dozens of parents were chatting in the crumbling tiny concrete stand as their children practised under the guidance of a handful of volunteer coaches.
One of the youngsters, wearing a Paris Saint-Germain jersey with “Messi 30” on the back, tries to beat his opponent with a drop of the shoulder.
Thirty-one years ago, Messi himself was doing the same thing on the same pitch, and people began to talk about this four-year-old sensation who was able to dribble like no child they had ever seen before.
“Word started going around the neighbourhood that a new Maradona was emerging,” David Treves, president of Grandoli, says.
“People would come up to you and ask which category he was in because they wanted to come and see him play. He was so short that the ball came up to his knees but what he could do with the ball was incredible.
“In the youth leagues here, once you get a seven-goal lead, the game is cut short. That happened a lot when he was here.
“Thank God I was able to witness him play in our beloved shirt.”
In the tiny clubhouse/changing room, there is a giant pendant with pictures of Messi in the orange shirt of Grandoli on it. The parents of some of the present crop proudly unfurl a banner of Messi as a youngster holding aloft a trophy for Grandoli alongside another image of him kissing the Copa America in the famous blue-and-white shirt of Argentina. Underneath, a caption reads: “From Grandoli to the world.”
Alejandra, whose son plays for Grandoli and has been helping out at the club for four years, says: “We have lots of kids who come here because Messi played here.”
But the affection for Messi here is not widespread. Treves’s praise for the superstar, who played for the club for two years, are tinged with disappointment.
“Unfortunately, we’ve not seen him since he left the club,” Treves says. “He’s not come here once. He’s come back to the city, but not to the club.
“Why? I don’t know. The last time I spoke to him was in 2009. And afterwards with his brother Matias. We chatted a bit. The reason why he didn’t come back here, only they know that.”
Treves says the Messi family have not put a penny back into Grandoli even though the club is only just surviving due to a “tiny” subscription fee from parents.
“I didn’t ask each of them [the Messis] for money,” he says. “If they think they don’t have to give anything, well, they’ll know why.”
Treves does not mince his words when discussing the problems that Rosario has. “The insecurity here is terrible,” he says. “Every day there are one or two homicides. Every day. The narcos have taken over the city.
“Having spaces like this for the kids to play on is fundamental. It provides a social function."
The four pitches that Messi played on in the next staging post of his career, at the Newell’s youth academy, are not much better than the one at Grandoli. The centre circle on one of them is so parched and grassless that it would not look out of place in the middle of the Kensington Oval in Barbados.
The youth complex is known as “Las Malvinas”, the Argentine name for the Falkland Islands. There is a strong connection between the city and the 1982 war with Britain, which claimed the lives of 650 Argentinians.
Many soldiers from the city fought in the conflict and the plan to raid the islands was named “Operacion Rosario.”
On the banks of the tea-brown Parana river that snakes through the city, there is a monument listing the names of all those who perished and the city’s tiny airport is named “Islas Malvinas” too.
At the Newell’s youth academy, a huge mural depicts Maradona’s Hand- of-God goal against England in the 1986 World Cup alongside a drawing of a British warship being sunk by an Argentine fighter pilot. “We swear to die with glory” reads the lettering underneath. A more tranquil mural has been painted on another pitch. It is of Messi, in a Newell’s home kit, juggling a ball with his bare feet.
“The lack of footwear is an artistic thing,” Antonio Enrique Dominguez, who coached Messi between the ages of 11 and 12, says. “The painting is very well done, but all the players wore boots here.”
Messi, “a miniature professional” according to Dominguez, captained a team called “La Maquina de ‘87” (The Machine of ‘87 – the year Messi was born), which was so named because they went unbeaten for three consecutive seasons.
During his seven years in the Newell’s academy, Messi scored more than 500 goals.
“One day, due to poor planning, I remember that we were asked to play two seven-a-side games in Rosario and then travel to Pujato, 50 kilometres away, to play an 11-a-side game,” Dominguez says.
“In the first half of the 11-a-side game, we were 2-0 down. In the second half, Leo taught everyone else a lesson. He was tiny but he performed like a colossus.
“He asked for the ball, dribbled past the opposition, and set his teammates up to make it 2-2 and then he scored in the last minute. Nicolas, my son, was with me at the time. Neither of us could believe what we had just seen.
“I kept the trophy from that day as a souvenir.”
Newell’s stadium, a 15-minute walk from their youth complex, is named after Marcelo Bielsa, the former Argentina and Leeds United manager, who coached Newell’s during their most successful era in the early 1990s. One stand is named after the former player, Tata Martino, another is dedicated to Maradona. Although Maradona played only five times for Newell’s in his one season at the club, he is idolised in these parts.
One sticker of Maradona on the security gates reads: “God exists and he played for Newell’s.”
When Maradona died two years ago, there was a candlelit vigil for him and thousands of flowers were laid next to the railings outside the stadium.
The only trace of Messi’s existence is in the hall of fame where one of his signed Argentina shirts hangs close to a bust of Isaac Newell, who established the club in 1930 after emigrating from Kent.
The 42,000-seat open-air stadium needs a facelift. The walls are crumbling and in the dressing room – which is dated – sits a black Pepsi table which looks like it has been borrowed from a bar. On top of it are a series of plastic figurines of the Virgin Mary and other holy figures who have presumably been brought in to bless the team, who are hovering in mid-table and have not won the title in nine years.
Around the scabby pitch runs a moat filled with rainwater and discarded plastic bottles.
If Messi ended his career at Newell’s and pumped money into the stadium, he could rival Maradona as a club legend, but officials accept that is unlikely and his next destination after Paris will be Inter Miami in the United States.
Maxi Bagnasco is too humble to admit it, but in Buenos Aires he is something of a celebrity.
As we sit down for coffee in the Argentine capital, he attracts a few curious glances from the other customers in the cafe. One eventually approaches the well-groomed 41-year-old, who is wearing a black baseball cap.
“You’re that artist, aren’t you?” she asks.
Bagnasco is a graffiti artist who specialises in the spectacular. He recently unveiled a huge 40m painting of Maradona on the side of a tower block near to Buenos Aires’s international airport.
He also covered one side of an apartment block in Naples with a spray painting of Maradona after the death of the Italian club’s most famous Argentine player.
“I’ve done so many murals of Maradona, I’ve lost count,” he says.
Bagnasco has had far fewer requests for Messi murals. In Rosario, he has painted only one, and that was as part of a three-player mural that included Angel Di Maria and Maxi Rodriguez, who also come from Messi’s home city.
Winning last year’s Copa America certainly helped Messi’s popularity in Argentina, but he still has some way to go to match Maradona’s fame – for three reasons.
Firstly, he has never played first-team club football in Argentina; secondly, he is not as outgoing as Argentina’s most gregarious No 10; and finally, unlike Maradona, he is yet to win a World Cup.
“There is a lot of pressure on Messi [to win a World Cup and match Maradona’s achievement],” Bagnasco says. “Diego is a mythical figure.
“The Pope, the Rolling Stones, Queen, they all came to Argentina because they wanted to meet him.
“People say that Messi is the better player but you don’t see the same passion in him off the pitch that you saw with Diego.
“Messi is like a machine on the pitch but nobody knows what he’s like off it. He goes, plays and when he leaves the field, he doesn’t speak.”
Maradona may be lionised because of his charismatic personality but he had many character flaws that Messi does not.
Messi is a home bird. When he returns to Rosario every summer, he is greeted by a throng of fans and photographers – they all know he is coming because they follow his private jet on flight-tracking apps – but rather than mix with the locals, he heads straight to one of his houses in Fumes Hill, a gated community near the airport which is home to wealthy people, including drug traffickers, with his wife – also from Rosario – and their three children.
He has not been out socially in the city since 2011, when he was slapped by a Rosario Central fan as he was leaving Club de la Milanesa. The restaurant serves Messi’s favourite meal, La Milanesa, a breaded steak served with chips and salad.
There is a huge rivalry between Newell’s and Central. Deadly fights often break out when the two teams play each other. When Newell’s lost the 1988 Copa Libertadores final to Nacional from Uruguay, the Central president headed to the streets of Rosario and started handing out dozens of free bottles of champagne.
Messi owns one of the flats in Torre Aqualina, an exclusive apartment block which has a 69m-high mural of himself on the side of it.
The tower block overlooks a restaurant with a huge patio called VIP, which Messi and his family own.
Before the 2011 attack on him, Messi used to pop over to VIP for breakfast during visits back home.
There are three pictures on the walls, two of which are of Messi celebrating the 2021 Copa America win over Brazil.
The restaurant/bar will be packed during the World Cup and judging by the size of the portions, you can see why. About a ten-minute drive away stands a weathered and heavily fortified two-storey house on Calle Estado de Israel in the La Bajada area of the city. It is here that Messi and his siblings grew up.
The Messis still own the family home, but it is unoccupied. Still, metal shutters cover the windows and a huge gate prevents anyone from stepping on to the driveway. A couple of years ago, some German tourists failed to take note of the sign that warned of a 24-hour security presence when they reached through the gate. They soon scarpered after a deafening alarm sounded.
“We get people from all over the world coming here,” one elderly neighbour says as he waters his plants.
La Bajada, now one of the poorest areas in the city, is like a shrine to Messi. “Leo 10” has been drawn on the kerb, which has been painted blue and white. The number 10 has been daubed on telegraph poles on the street and there are many murals of Messi in the area, most of which show him playing for Argentina.
One is particularly eye-catching because it is painted around a 1x3m rectangle of concrete that has been left blank. Squint hard enough and you will see that someone has scribbled the words “Lepra Leo”. Lepra (leper) is the nickname for Newell’s Old Boys. Messi himself is said to have etched those words on to the wall during his childhood. Another 70m high mural of Messi can be found a few streets away, opposite Messi’s primary school, Escuela No 66 General Las Heras.
Around the image of Messi with two boots hung around his neck, the artists Massi Ledesma and Fer Lerena have written: “From another galaxy and from my barrio.”
Another artist has painted an image of Messi in the schoolyard where he used to spend the two 15-minute breaks that the pupils were given each day.
“If he could, he would have spent all day playing in the yard,” Andrea Sosa, Messi’s former teacher, says. Sosa taught Messi from the age of eight to ten behind the yellow door of classroom two, along with 32 other pupils.
“There were some little terrors in his group, but he wasn’t one of them,” she says. “He always behaved.”
When Argentina play Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Poland in their group C games, the vast school hall will be filled with students watching their most famous alumnus.
“The children have been asking if we can put televisions up so we can watch him play in the World Cup,” Sosa says. “For them, he is their idol.
“This city, this country is so passionate about football. The final is on my birthday so I hope that will be a nice present for me.”
The first words that the pupils see as they enter the school are written on a wall to their left. “Memories that will not fade. People who I will not forget.”
Walter Barrera, 35, remembers growing up with Messi in La Bajada. “We were into building things, running, jumping, playing football, riding our bikes,” he says.
“We played baseball with a neighbour who had bought us gloves and a bat. Leo was competitive. He wanted to win at everything.”
Barerra also remembers sitting alongside him in the same school to watch the first World Cup that he can remember, in the United States in 1994.
“I remember watching Batistuta score – no, it was Caniggia,” he says, referring to the long-haired former Rangers striker’s goals against Nigeria in the group stage.
Like Messi, Barrera had dreams of playing football on the biggest stage, but unlike his friend, he never made it into the big time. “We used to talk about the World Cup and wonder if one day one of us would play in it,” Barrera says. “Above everything, we wanted to play for the national team.”
Now Barrera’s friend, the “little flea” from Rosario who overcame the odds and became the world’s greatest player, has one last chance to win the world’s greatest prize.
This article originally appeared in The Times and is reproduced with permission
More Coverage
1000 junior football prospects with nowhere to play
An angry parent says junior footballers have been “carved up and told you don’t exist” amid a proposed overhaul which has left about 1000 players in jeopardy.
Disgraced drone-ban coach lands prominent A-League gig
The banned coach who took the brunt of the punishment for Canada’s drone scandal at the Paris Olympics is set to revive their career in the A-League.