Steroids helped Messi's game grow
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The world's greatest soccer player started using human growth hormone at the age of just 9 years old and continued to use it systematically for more than four years.
And it was perfectly legal.
The use of HGH in a normal bodied human being acts as an anabolic steroid, but for Lionel Messi, it merely enabled to him to overcome a condition known as growth hormone deficiency and reach his natural height. The spectacularly skilled Argentinean is no giant, standing just 5-foot-6, even in his cleats. Without treatment, though, doctors believe he would have reached only 4-7 as an adult.
"Nothing allows us to overcome genetics," Dr. Diego Schwarsztein, the endocrinologist who first treated Messi as a 9-year-old, said in a recent interview with journalist Luca Caioli. "But if difficulties arise we can help it along. Those who genuinely have growth hormone deficiency have it for life. That is why it is necessary to intervene."
The intervention took the form of injections every night, Messi grimacing in pain as the needles were jabbed into his skin by his father Jorge. Even then, the growth in his stature was slow.
The development in his soccer career was not.
"In a lot of ways, being small has not been a bad thing, certainly in football," Messi said. "I have never thought too much about it. It wasn't nice having the injections, but it was just how things were."
Indeed, in some ways Messi's condition actually helped lay the foundation for his elevation to elite status, rather than serving as a barrier.
[Photos: See Lionel Messi in action]
His hormone treatment cost around $150,000 per year, an astronomical sum in Argentina. Even though his home club in the Argentinean city of Rosario, Newell's Old Boys, could see his potential as a child, it could not justify such a huge investment on a player still years away from the first team.
After first agreeing to meet the costs, payments soon dried up, prompting Messi's parents, in particular his father, to seek other options. Spanish super club Barcelona came in quickly, having heard about Messi's prodigious talent through its worldwide network of talent scouts. And the rest, says Jorge Messi, is history.
"Barcelona did what they said they would do," he said. "Lionel improved from the moment he first got there. He found it hard at first, but it has been the best place for him."
Messi agrees.
"It is a special place," he said. "They know how to work with players' skills and develop them."
Messi doesn't like to talk about his hormone condition and rarely does so. This summer, though, the issue of size will be put in stark focus.
That is because he has the chance to follow in the footsteps of another diminutive man from Argentina – Diego Maradona.
Maradona, one of the best players ever and the star of Argentina's 1986 World Cup triumph, is now the hot-tempered and wildly unpredictable coach of the Albicelestes. He is tasked with trying to convert Messi's brilliant form for Barcelona, where he won another Spanish league title and the world player of the year award last season, into better performances for the national team.
The 2006 World Cup was a little too early for Messi. Already a rising star at Barcelona, he was ignored during Argentina's quarterfinal defeat to host Germany, remaining stuck on the subs' bench. At the time, then-Argentinean coach Jose Pekerman thought Messi was too short – on experience.
But there is a sense that this is Messi's time, with the 2010 World Cup arriving with him at the peak of his powers. His first action will be on Saturday, when Argentina takes on Nigeria in its first Group B game in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium. Messi wants to return to the same venue, for the final, a month later.
"I am ready for this," Messi said. "I have waited, not very patiently, for this World Cup to come around. I want to do my best for my country and play to a great level."
More than ever, over the next month, Lionel Messi is ready to stand tall.
