A paper napkin requested from a waiter at the Pompeya Tennis Club in Montjuïc. That was all Carles Rexach, Barcelona’s technical secretary, needed to seal the most important signing in football history. It was December 14, 2000, and Jorge Messi was on the verge of taking his son back to Argentina.
What very few people know is that Barcelona had spent three months hesitating over whether to invest in a 13-year-old boy with growth problems whom no Argentine club, neither Newell’s nor River Plate, had wanted to support financially. While the Catalan club wavered, Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid were beginning to enter the picture. Then it was Rexach who, convinced from the very first minute he saw Messi in a training match, took charge and handwrote the club’s commitment. Agents Minguella and Gaggioli signed as witnesses. The original document is still kept in a bank in Andorra.
Messi would officially make his debut in March 2001, scored a goal wearing the number 9, and the rest is history: 782 matches, 674 goals, and two decades transforming Barça into the best team in the world. It all started with a napkin.