“Mes-si! Mes-si! Mes-si!”
The 31-year-old forward’s name resounds—almost musically—in soccer stadiums with each electrifying goal.
Lionel Messi, who plays for Spanish club FC Barcelona, is currently in Russia vying for the 2018 World Cup on behalf of his native Argentina. Considered one of the best to play the game in his generation—if not all time—one might think that as a young man he strove to one day become the sport’s greatest. But the self-effacing athlete told 60 Minutes’ Bob Simon in 2013 that that was not his singular goal.
“I never really thought that I was going to be really good or not,” he recalled. “I wasn’t playing football then just to be the best, I just wanted to have fun.”
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