Lionel Messi, born on 24 June 1987 in Rosario is an exciting Argentine football player, who currently plays as a second striker for FC Barcelona. Born in the Santa Fe province of Argentina in a family where football was king, Lionel Messi started kicking the ball at an early age. When he was just 5 years old, he joined the training sessions of the club his father was coaching at that time, Grandoli where he showed remarkable ability for a player so young, and soon got popular in the media as "the new Diego Maradona in making". Being close to his father at Grandoli, Messi and his father knew this club would not be one to offer the young boy a future as a football player, so his father decided to take him to one of the most prestigious youth academies in Argentina, that of Newell's Old Boys. This happened in 1995, when Leonel Messi was just 8 years old.