18 years ago, Lionel Messi became famous throughout the world when he helped Argentina win the World Youth Championship. Before Messi burst onto the scene in the Dutch tournament in the summer of 2005, it would be surprising to know that he was almost unknown even to his own countrymen.

Young talent… Lionel Mecci

In 2003, Messi was recommended by Barcelona’s Football Director at that time, Carles Rexach, to the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) so that the Spanish U17 team could call him up. Messi is eligible to choose to follow Spain or Argentina at team level. But Messi refused this invitation. The prodigy born in Rosario has long dreamed of playing for the Argentina national team. The RFEF side still did not give up. They continued to earnestly invite Messi in 2004.

Faced with RFEF’s fierce pursuit of Messi, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) cannot sit still. To prevent the risk of “long nights with many dreams”, AFA must urgently summon Messi, starting from the U20 group. In the summer of 2004, AFA sent Messi a summons to Barcelona for the first time.

That summons is probably more of a “retention” thing. Until that time, most Argentines and even AFA had only heard that Messi was considered very promising by Barca and RFEF. They don’t have a specific picture of who Messi is or how talented he is. That’s why the AFA summons sent to Barca names the person being summoned as Lionel Mecci.

That unimaginable spelling error was only corrected in Barca’s response letter. The Catalan team explained that they want to keep Messi for the Spanish King’s Cup arena for young teams. AFA is still determined to summon Messi to play for the Argentina U20 team. Either way, they have to let Messi wear Argentina’s traditional blue and white striped shirt for the first time in his life.

Knowing that Barca would only release troops for matches recognized by FIFA, AFA used a trick to turn the friendly match between U20 Argentina and U20 Paraguay on June 29, 2004 into a truly epic match. They “urged” the audience to come to the stadium to watch this match, each of them remember to bring a newspaper to… pay for the ticket.

Starting from a reserve roleOn June 29, 2004, just 5 days after his 17th birthday, Messi made his U20 Argentina debut. He can only enter the field from the bench. Argentina’s U20 fitness coach at that time, Gerardo Salorio, recalled: “At halftime, I had to urge Messi: Warm up, boy.” Don’t you want to go on the field?” Coming from the bench, Messi promptly scored 1 goal and assisted 2 goals in U2O Argentina’s 8-0 victory over U20 Paraguay.

Messi continued to be called up to attend the South American youth tournament in February 2005. However, he still had to sit on the bench for 6 matches in this tournament. And when Messi and U20 Argentina attended the World Youth Championship (predecessor of the U20 World Cup) in the Netherlands in the summer of 2005, many Argentines still thought that Sergio Aguero was the more desirable star.

That’s right, Aguero debuted in the Argentine National Championship for Independiente when he was just 15 years old. Aguero entered the 2005 World Youth Championship as a regular starter in the Independiente squad. When Aguero first became teammates with Messi at U20 Argentina, he had almost no idea about this new teammate. When they first met, Aguero still had to ask Messi’s first and last names. Aguero also only knew in general that the newspaper had posted about “a young talent from Barcelona”.

In Argentina U20’s opening match against the US U20, coach Francisco Ferraro continued to put Messi on the bench. U20 Argentina lost 0-1. After that disappointing result, opinions began to appear asking why Messi was not allowed to start? Coach Ferraro had to explain: “The team doctor told me that Messi has a muscle strain and it would be better if he came on the field in the second half.”

Mistakes are corrected from the next match. Messi started when Argentina U20 met Egypt U20. It was Messi who opened the scoring and scored the first goal for Argentina U20 in this tournament.

From that point on, no one could stop Messi. He scored a total of 6 goals, making a decisive contribution to Argentina U20’s championship journey. Personally, Messi holds the double title of Golden Ball and Top Scorer at the 2005 World Youth Championship.