Messi: Boy Who Stopped Growing ⚽ Life Story B1 English

No money for medicine. Injections every night. B1 English story.
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Learn English through Lionel Messi's life story, spoken by a British native speaker, with a real human voice. Comprehensible input. Intermediate English listening. 

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Free Transcript (50+ languages)  → https://simpleenglishbooks.com/b7

📌 This is a true story. All events are real and taken from published sources. Some moments are dramatized — thoughts and feelings are imagined — and the English is simplified for learners.

Transcript

New Jersey, USA, 2016. Lionel Messi stood in front of the ball. One penalty kick. The Copa America final.

With 80,000 people watching in the stadium, millions more were watching at home.

In Argentina, he had lost three finals with his country already.

Not this time, he thought. Please, not this time.

Time to take the penalty.

He ran forward, he kicked the ball. It flew high — too high — over the goal, into the crowd.

Messi stood alone on the grass. He held his face in his hands. He looked at the ground. While the other team celebrated, and in that moment, the best footballer in the world made a decision that shocked the planet. In 2016, ten years ago, Messi retired from international football.

But to understand that moment, we have to go back. Back to the beginning. Back to a small boy in Argentina. A boy whose body stopped growing.

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Okay. Rosario, Argentina, the 1990s. Leo was the smallest boy in his school. Always the smallest. When he was four, he wanted to play for the local club, Grandoli. But the coach looked at him and shook his head. He's too small. He'll get hurt. He can't play.

But Leo's grandmother, Celia, she didn't accept this. She argued with the coach as much as she had to. "Let him play! Just let him play!"

And finally the coach agreed.

And when little Leo got the ball, everything changed. The tiny boy ran past player, after player. Nobody could get the ball off of him. And he scored again, and scored again. Every game. Nobody could stop him. And the coach and the other parents couldn't believe their eyes. Maybe you've seen videos of Messi playing when he's nine years old — it's unbelievable.

So Celia, his grandmother, took Leo to every match that she could.

And she told everyone, "One day, my boy will be famous."

But Celia, she died when Leo was just ten years old. So she never saw what happened next. But today, every time Messi scores a goal, every time he scores, he points to the sky with both hands. You might have noticed this. He's pointing at her.

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Soon after this, the doctors in Rosario discovered a serious problem.

So Leo, he had stopped growing. He was just eleven years old, but he looked like he was eight. And the tests showed that his body did not make enough growth hormone. Growth hormone is the natural chemical that's needed — the one that makes children grow.

So without the treatment, without the medicine, he might only reach 1.4 meters — far too small for a professional football player. Well, it's like a dwarf. It's — what's that, four foot seven or something? So, too small for his dream.

But there was a treatment. But it was painful. And it was strange for a child — like, every night, Leo, as a kid, had to inject himself with a needle into his own leg, night after night, injection after injection, for many years.

So imagine that: an eleven-year-old injecting his own legs, alone in his room.

But he did it. He did it again and again.

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So there was a bigger problem than the pain. The treatment cost about $900 every month, and this was just too much. His father worked in a steel factory making metal, and his mother cleaned houses. They didn't have that money.

So his club, Newell's Old Boys, they helped at first, but they couldn't afford it either.

Then another big club, River Plate — a really big club in Argentina — they liked Messi's football skills and his talent, but they couldn't pay for his medicine either. So here was the situation: perhaps the most talented child in all of Argentina, but nobody would pay for him to grow. Nobody would pay for his medicine.

So who would save his dream?

The answer came from across the Atlantic Ocean, far away in Europe.

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Barcelona, Spain. The year was 2000.

So Leo was now 13, and he flew to Spain for a trial with Barcelona, who were the best football club in the world at the time.

So within minutes of watching him play — just minutes — the club's sporting director, he knew. "We have to sign this boy." He knew it. "We have to sign him. We have to sign him." But the club's directors weren't sure. "He's too small," they said. "He's too young. A bit of a risk."

Then weeks passed, and then months passed, and still nothing was signed. So it was just Leo and his father — the rest of the family was back in Argentina — and after months they were just living in Spain, wondering what to do next. And his father lost patience.

"If there's no contract soon, we're going home," he said.

So there was an important meeting. The sporting director and two football agents, they met at a tennis club, and this was the moment they had to get him signed. They needed to promise something, or the boy and his dad would go back to Argentina. And they had no paper — and this is a classic story — so he asked the waiter, "Do you have a napkin?"

And they gave him a napkin, and on a simple paper napkin, that's where they signed. They wrote a promise. A really bad contract, I guess. I mean, a contract on the napkin.

But they promised on the napkin that Barcelona would sign Messi.

And that napkin sold two years ago, in 2024. It sold for a million dollars — that napkin that changed football forever.

So then Barcelona paid for Leo's treatment. And of course, it wasn't guaranteed that he would grow, but this is how much they believed in his talent.

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So with his whole family — brothers and little sister — back in Argentina, Leo and his father stayed in Spain.

And there was a problem with his registration papers. So even though he was in Spain now, he was not allowed to play most matches in his first year. So he was just sitting there on the bench, watching, for most of the first year.

And he was very shy in his academy, very quiet. His teammates actually thought that he was mute — mute means someone who cannot speak — including Piqué and Cesc Fàbregas, who, if you're into football, you might know these very famous players. They said they never heard his voice.

And sometimes, in the nights, Leo — sometimes he cried. He's short, away from his family. Small boy.

But he stayed. He trained, he grew, he continued the injections, and he finally reached 1.7 meters. And they fixed the papers finally, so he could play.

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And then he played every match he could. By his early 20s, he was already the best player on earth. With Barcelona, he was the star. He won everything: the Champions League, the league titles, and the Ballon d'Or. The Ballon d'Or is the greatest prize for a football player — it's given to the best player in the world. And Messi won it eight times, more than any other player.

In Spain, they loved him. But back home in Argentina, did they love him? Well, it was a bit more complicated.

Argentina wanted a hero like Maradona. Diego Maradona was a loud, passionate, fighting man, singing the national anthem, fire in his eyes. And Maradona was their hero, the best player to ever play the game. But Messi was quiet, and he didn't sing the anthem. He was shy.

And when Messi lost finals with Argentina — he lost four finals, the Copa America in 2007, the World Cup final in 2014, the Copa America in 2015 — many Argentinians didn't comfort him. They attacked him.

And I remember this kind of bad press against him. The general idea was, "He doesn't care about Argentina. He's not really one of us."

And I remember hearing about this: in 2011, playing for Argentina near his home city of Rosario, Messi was booed by his own fans. Imagine — booed.

So the boy who injected his own legs every night, dreaming of playing for Argentina — booed. Thumbs down.

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And then came the night in New Jersey, in 2016 — the fourth lost final. The penalty, he shot it high over the goal.

And after the match, Messi spoke to the reporters in the post-match conference. "The national team is finished for me," he said. "It's been four finals, and we lost them all. It's not for me."

And he retired from international football.

But was this the end? If it was, it wouldn't be a great story, would it?

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Argentina woke up. "Messi can't retire." People thought, "What?" It completely freaked everyone out over there.

Signs appeared everywhere around Argentina and Buenos Aires: "No te vayas, Leo" — which means "Don't go, Leo." Graffiti on the walls. Messages appeared on subway station screens. Children posted videos on social media, begging him to return. Even the president of Argentina called him. So the country that booed him was now begging him to stay.

And Messi came back.

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And it wasn't a fairy tale, though. There was work to be done. So in 2017, Argentina — they nearly weren't going to qualify for the World Cup. Just one match. And they nearly didn't qualify. But then Messi scored a hat-trick — three goals in one game — to save them. And they went to the World Cup finals.

And this Argentina team was different. These were younger players who had grown up watching Leo. And for them, they didn't see a failure — they saw their hero, their captain. They probably had posters of him when they were ten years old.

So it was the Copa America final against Brazil, in 2021. And Argentina beat Brazil, one-nil. Messi fell to his knees. His first trophy for Argentina, after trying for 16 years to win something for his country, after losing four finals.

And then, when he was 35 — which is, you know, many players have retired by the time they're 35 — in 2022, the World Cup, and Argentina won.

Messi was the captain of the winning team of the World Cup, the greatest tournament in the world.

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So you've probably seen the pictures of Messi lifting the World Cup. And sometimes you think — some players have won everything. Does it mean anything to win more?

But if you look at his face on top of the bus, riding through Buenos Aires with millions of people on the streets — yeah, you can definitely see it meant a lot to him, right? Everyone chanting his name, to the smallest boy from Rosario, the boy that nobody would pay for his medical treatment, who had to inject his own legs.

He was the champion of the world.

And still today, when he scores, he points to the sky. And maybe somewhere his grandmother, who never gave up on him, who always pushed him onto the pitch, argued with the coach — maybe she watches him. Maybe, right? I mean, who knows. This isn't a religious story.

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But anyway, so let's see how this podcast ages. Do you think Messi is the greatest ever football player?

I probably do. I do, to be honest. He's better than Ronaldo. Definitely. Faster, more creative, more intelligent. He does passes that I haven't seen Ronaldo do.

But what do you think? Leave a comment, say hello.

And I hope that was a good story for you. Okay, guys. Later.