Lionel Messi was a superstar at nine years of age! Senior players used to stay behind after training to watch ‘tiny magician’ in action

Matias Fondato, a former Newell's Old Boys player who has since traded his football boots for an artist's brush, recalled the surreal atmosphere surrounding a young Messi. Despite being several years older, Fondato and his first-team team-mates were well aware of the child prodigy tearing up the youth ranks at their training facility.

"Everyone was talking about this tiny magician, like destroying teams," Fondato told talkSPORT. "At that time I was starting to be in the first team. And the whole first team, before going to the hotel, we just stayed watching him. We had a little bit of time, like after the shower and until the bus left for the hotel, we just went to watch his games. It was just absurd to watch him playing. It's actually the same as now, but when he was like nine years old."

Messi’s youth team was famously known as "The Machine of 87," a squad that went unbeaten for three years. Even at that tender age, the comparisons to Diego Maradona were already being drawn by the local faithful, fueled by the fact that Messi was in the crowd for Maradona’s own Newell's debut in 1993.

By age nine, the youngster was already performing kick-ups for the fans at the Estadio Marcelo Bielsa while they chanted his name.

"I mean, the thing was his size," Fondato said of the young forward. "He was very, very tiny, but at the same time, it looked like he had like an adult mind, you know, playing against kids of that age. So you could see, maybe, you wouldn't say that he would become what he actually became, but you could see he was like completely different to anything else that you've seen at that age."

While Messi never played a competitive senior game for Newell's before his historic move to Spain, his impact remains eternal in Argentina. Decades after those youth games, he continues to dominate the global stage, with former teammates like Pedri hailing his "crazy" form and longevity.

For Fondato, watching the veteran lift the 2022 World Cup was the final piece of a puzzle that began in Rosario.

"Actually, at some point in Argentina, some people were complaining about, 'Oh, he's not winning the World Cup. He will never do it,'" Fondato explained. "So after he won the World Cup, and now, in terms of the things that he's doing now, it's unbelievable how he can keep doing the same for so, so many years. For me, I was a person of football, so it was never in doubt."

The connection between Fondato and Messi eventually came full circle through art. Fondato, who became an "adopted Geordie" after living in Newcastle for eight years, has painted for several Premier League stars. However, his most significant subject remains the boy he used to watch from the sidelines at the Newell's facility.

"Actually, he has one painting [from] me," Fondato revealed, noting that he presented the work to Messi ahead of the 2018 World Cup. "Just to give him a painting in his hands and to visit all the Argentinian squad before the 2018 World Cup." It was a fitting reunion for the artist and the man who, even as a nine-year-old, was already painting masterpieces on the pitch.