By Chris Wright
Barcelona folklore has it that, having astounded everybody by running rings around the club’s older youth teams back in 2000 aged just 13, Lionel Messi‘s father threatened to pull the plug on his son’s association with the Catalans during a restaurant meeting with Barca’s sporting director at the time Charly Rexach if a deal could not be struck there and then.
Being the enterprising so-and-so that he is, Rexach called for the barman to bring a pen and paper over and the two parties proceeded to draft up a contract on one of the restaurant’s flimsy serviettes.
The rest, as they say, is history…
…never has a paper napkin been so instrumental in the lineage of footballing destiny.
(video via the Telegraph)