Messi in the beginning: ‘I told Messi I could make him taller than Maradona–The Times

A medical doctor 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 around 1.29 metres.

“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 Andrés Messi, who was accompanied to the doctor’s surgery that day by his parents, Jorge and Celia.

Schwarzstein remembers Messi’s mother and father “reacting like any parent would” upon being told that their child had been diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency (GHD) — a condition that affects 1 in 5,000 children. Those who have GHD essentially stop growing at three years old.

“They were unhappy and worried,” Schwarzstein 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 tall and Leo ended up 1.69 metres. 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 £750 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.”

“There were a lot of suitors for that shirt, but he gave it to me, and that means a lot,” Schwarzstein said. “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. As an Argentine citizen, as a human being, I would like them to lose all three games and be eliminated in the first round,” he says.

“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.”

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.”

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 Domínguez, who coached Messi between the ages of 11 and 12, said “The painting is very well done, but all the players wore boots here.”

If Messi ended his career at Newell’s and pumped money into the stadium, he could rival Maradona as a club legend, but club officials accept that is unlikely and his next destination after Paris will be Inter Miami.

Winning last year’s Copa America certainly helped Messi’s popularity in Argentina, but he still has some way to go to match Maradona.

Messi lags behind Maradona in the popularity stakes for three reasons. Firstly, he has never played 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.

“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.”