Retirement plans

Messi worried by retirement

Messi moved to Barcelona from his home town of Rosario in Argentina as an 11-year-old, with the club's willingness to pay for expensive growth hormone treatments well-documented.

Those injections helped Messi to develop like any other child would have and, although he remained more diminutive than many of his contemporaries, his physical stature eventually stopped being a weakness and he blossomed in La Masia.