They present the first portrait authorised of Leo Messi

Guillem Balagué, journalist and resident Catalan writer in London, has presented in the House of the Book of Barcelona the editions in Catalan (Column) and Spanish (Cúpula, of the group Planet) of the first relate authorised of Leo Messi. Along almost 600 pages Balagué reviews and analyses the keys of the success of the Barcelona star, accessing to the intimate circle of the player and with witnesses that have followed closely his path, from his origins in Rosary until his arrival to the peak of the world-wide football.

The ex president of the FC Barcelona Sandro Rosell, that has written the epilogue, the seleccionador Argentinian Alejandro Sabella, author of the prologue, and mates like Xavi, Iniesta, Cesc, Hammered or Mascherano offer his testimony and his vision of the crack Argentinian. Between the voices stands out the one of the ex trainer of the FC Barcelona Pep Guardiola, with the one who Messi coincided during four seasons.

Balagué, that has sold already almost 4.000 copies of the edition in English that presented in past December, says that, further of his quality, the success of Messi explains by a very strong personality product of the hard moments that lived when with 13 years had to separate of his family and by his "compulsive wish to win and to improve constantly like player".

The act of presentation of the book, driven by the journalist Lluís Canut, has had the presence of the trainer of the section of feminine football of the FC Barcelona, Xavi Llorens, that went the first trainer that had Leo Messi in the FC Barcelona. Llorens, then responsible maximum of the Childish B, remembers his first meeting with Messi: "A very shy boy and reserved that it was to change in a corner and to the that all the mates did not stop to ask him of where came and of what played". A boy that in the field transformed in an exceptional footballer "and only touch the first balloon already darse of the extraordinary quality that had". 

Llorens, connoisseur of the sufferings and sacrifices of the young footballers, concludes that "Messi, in another team, also would have been definitely the best of the world but the Barça has allowed him arrive to the peak 4 or 5 years before".