Messi was once banned from football for being too small

He's been hailed as The Messiah for leading Barcelona to victory over Manchester United in the Champions League final. But Lionel Messi, who dazzled Wembley on Saturday, was once banned from playing because he was too small.

One his first day at school in Rosario, Argentina, the lad, who would twice become Fifa World Player of the Year, had to watch from the sidelines. Messi later revealed: “In my childhood I had difficult times because of hormonal problems.”

In 1995 the young eight-year-old attracted the attention of Buenos Aires club River Plate.

But they pulled out of a deal to sign the boy, nicknamed The Flea by older brother Rodrigo, because it could not pay for his £500-a-month medical bills.

The future looked even bleaker when club medics told Messi’s stunned family he would grow no taller than 4ft 7in.

Dad Jorge and wife Celia, a part-time cleaner, could not afford to pay for their son’s treatment, on top of the cost of bringing up their other three children as Argentina’s economy crumbled.

But luck was on their side. Incredibly, a family relative in Catalonia, Spain, managed to get a trial for the then 13-year-old with Barcelona.

“It was there that I learned to walk just to be able to chase a dream. And yet, I was told I would never be a footballer" Messi wrote in his biography page

The club’s sporting director Carlos Rexach crossed continents to watch him - and was impressed.

“I snapped him up there and then,” he recalls. “In fact, as a symbolic gesture, I got him to sign on the back of a serviette.”

Messi joined Barcelona’s under-14 squad in 2000, after the club agreed to foot his medical expenses. He moved to Spain with his proud dad, and in his first match, he scored five times. Now 5ft 7in, Messi has won five La Liga titles, three Champions League titles and even an Olympic gold medal with Argentina. But the dynamic dribbler remains shy and quietly-spoken.

He enjoys simple tastes - a danish pastry or two and coffee for breakfast - and insists: “I like the quiet life. I’m just a normal guy. I drive a car the club provides.” He is guarded about his personal life.

“I snapped him up there and then,” he recalls. “In fact, as a symbolic gesture, I got him to sign on the back of a serviette.” Carlos Rexach

He has been linked in the past to Argentinian glamour model Luciana Salazar, 30, and is currently said to be dating childhood sweetheart Antonella Roccuzzo.

Asked what his favourite book was during an interview, he said: “I don’t read books. The special thing for me is scoring goals - I love to celebrate with my friends and team-mates.”

Fortunately, he gets to do that quite a lot. He netted a staggering 53 goals this season alone. His masterful skills on the pitch have helped him become one of football’s wealthiest players.

US business magazine Forbes estimate Messi, 23, is worth £20million. He enjoys multi-million pound sponsorship deals with Adidas, PepsiCo, Konami, Audemars Piguet, Chery, AirEuropa and Dolce & Gabbana.

He is also a UNICEF ambassador, and his own charity The Leo Messi Foundation helps provide healthcare and education to vulnerable kids. The work is a nod to his own childhood struggle - and a desire to give something back.

“I like my charity work with my foundation helping children around the world,” he says.

In Saturday’s game, Messi scored the decisive second goal nine minutes into the second half and then set up Spanish team-mate David Villa, 29, for the killer third goal after 69 minutes. Yesterday, millions of fans who watched the final on TV reminisced on the internet about his mouthwatering contribution the night before.

His official Facebook page is followed by 14,814,276 fans.

He says on his biography page: “No matter the titles, trophies and honours, I will always be the boy who grew up in Rosario, Santa Fé, Argentina.

“It was there that I learned to walk just to be able to chase a dream. And yet, I was told I would never be a footballer.

“But being smaller forced me to be faster. Disbelievers, critics and naysayers made me more determined than ever. With the support of my family I moved to Spain with the chance to play for Barça.

“It was an opportunity to be the player that I always dreamed I could be.”

On Twitter, fans exchanged banter about the sheer brilliance of the 10-stone star.

One posted: “God has blessed Lionel Messi with the pace of a jaguar, the accuracy of an archer and the hair of Paul Merton.”

Another fan joked: “Man City have this morning offered Barcelona £765million, the Moon and the Gallagher brothers for Lionel Messi. Undervalued.”

(Written by Andrew Gregory for Daily Mirror)

Power of silence

Zaka

Being a quiet person, I believe you can say anything without words. It may sound crazy, but I find the best way to live life, with fewer words. I wish people practice silence more than speech. In this cacophonic world one needs to understand that you did not need to shout to be heard, you can talk without speaking and people can hear you without listening. Have you ever wondered not that why the wise people speak with such a low voice, which could be categorized as a whisper. It’s because an authority lay more in knowledge of the subject rather than in the volume. 

In today’s world many problems merely created by words, the words that shouldn't have been spoken, the words which brought us pain, fades away with times though but leaves the scars behind. The world needs to be changed and the sound of silence can help the cause. It takes a lot to practice love and peace, we all talk about it but didn’t start practicing. Little things do a lot and affect people. When you walking into store or exiting ATM box and you see someone about to go through the door, hold it open, you might not realize it but you make that person’s day. Smile at someone you don’t know, you never know what that person going through but it’ll make him feel better. But when people do wrong to you, let it pass and walk away, trust me it’s harder to walk away than to punch the person in the face. Realize that you’ve the power to be a nice person, because if you try to seek revenge, you’re just as bad as the person who started it. 

I believe that negativity that hate, only makes for a worse future for the entire world, positive people overcome more obstacles and get further in life.

Leroy Brownlow said “There are times when silence has the loudest voice”, yeah I got the language of silence that can be heard.

Ballon d'Or: Indeed Messi worth it

Zaka

Did the wrong man win the Ballon d'Or?, many people have been asking this question ever since Fifa unveiled the 2010 winner of the most prestigious award in the history of game.

In a close contest, Messí got 22.65% of the votes from the captains, coaches and journalists from Fifa's national federations, ahead of his Barcelona’s teammates Andres Ineista and Xave Hernandez, bear in mind that the little Spanish magician Ineista was widely tipped as a favourite. In the end Andres Iniesta finished second with 17.36% and Xavi Hernandez got 16.48%.

There had been the widespread assumption. "Iniesta is the favourite," predicted the Barcelona-based sports daily El Mundo Deportivo on its front page on Monday. The rest of the Spanish media generally agreed, although public sentiment seemed to go with Xavi. A recent poll in the respected magazine Don Balon said 62% of the public thought Xavi should take the prize. Other polls last weekend broadly concurred.

Spaniards may feel hard done by, because Spain has lost all the global sports polls: the 2016 Olympic Games, the 2018 World Cup, the 2010 Ballon D'Or.". But Ballon D'Or  voting quite different from awarding the World cup hosting, and then if somebody thinks that deciding factor should be wining trophies, then Netherlands and Inter Milan star Wesley Sneijder should be the winner, but he didn’t make the final shortlist which was huge surprise.

Like in the past world Cup usually goes to decide who wins this award, which isn’t the right way to go. The criteria should be player performance and it seems in the end that the people went for individual level and right now Messi is a step above everyone else. If someone has the word “Why?” in mind, then let me show you some stats which is telling the whole story.

The little Argentine maestro completed an amazing 2009-10 season scoring 34 in 35 league games, and scored 47 goals in all competitions. I mean you can call it simply bad luck that he wasn't able to guide his national side to glory in South Africa at the World Cup, and failed to find the net as Argentina were eliminated at the quarter-final stage by Germany.

This season has seen the Argentine forward, for whom superlatives are simply running out; take his game to another level. So far he has another 18 goals and 12 assists in La Liga this season from just 15 games, and 28 goals in 26 matches all competitions. His current Barcelona record stands at 155 goals in 240 matches, and a further 15 goals in 53 matches for Argentina.

Above stats speaks for themselves, we’ve been witnessing the most gifted football player on the planet. Just like to quote South American football pundit Tim Vickery remarks after he watched Lionel Messi for the first time in South American under-20s championship. He was only 17 at the time, and even Argentina did not know much about him. Tim said

“There was a feeling that he had been selected to ensure that, if there was something special there, Argentina rather than Spain would be the long-term beneficiaries. Messi was not even given the number 10 shirt. Within a few minutes, though, it was apparent that we were dealing with something very special, and the rest is history”.

We have lost touch with who we are!!!

Zaka

In this age, now more than ever before, fear overwhelmed everything else in society.  Why should this be so? Were people as fearful years ago as they are now? Or has society changed to such an extent that along with all of the technological wonders that have been created, to make our lives more comfortable, instead, hand-in-hand with those wonders goes fear.

Society has changed for the worst. My parents tell us every now and then that there was a time, not too long ago, when people could leave their front doors open while they ran to the shops. There was a time when people knew everyone in their neighbourhood by their names. A time when neighbours where like one big family and would look out for each other.When something bad would occur, everyone would chip in to deal with the matter - in other words, people where never left by themselves, or made to feel lonely. It was a time when strangers would be welcomed on any doorstep, with a cheery smile and hello and a new friend would be made.

But times have changed.   With the proliferation of newspapers, and the media at large, it seems that every single hour, we are bombarded with the latest atrocity that has occurred in our own country, or somewhere in the world.  In fact at one time, bad things only happened to those countries who we would view from far off on our television screens.

The mantra would go: As long as it is happening to them, and not us, then we are alright. In some respects it was a very insular way of thinking, a way of saying that those things that we heard, read or saw would never occur here. How wrong we where.  Floods, earthquakes, proliferation in murders, the silence of people who would rather keep themselves to themselves for fear of attack.

People who would step over somebody lying in the street without a second glance.  People too afraid to leave their homes unlocked (like our parrents grand parrents used to do). People too afraid to allow their children to play out in the fresh air.

The main causes for all of those things is fear.  Fear rules our hearts and our heads and stops us from being fully human, and it traps us into a society that we ourselves have created.

As long as it is on somebody else's doorstep and not mine is the mantra now. That is the way of thinking of all of us in society these days. The modern world in which we live is filled with terrors we could not imagine before, and because of this, fear has a grip on our hearts.

It was a wise man who said that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. What does that mean?  Well, if we live our lives by thinking ahead, ie: thinking something might happen to us, or our loved ones, every single time we stepped out the door, then we would never live at all.

The threat of gang warfare, terrorist attacks, and the ultimate, nuclear and biological attacks on our country and person, is too much for us. We cocoon ourselves into our own little worlds, hardly speaking to anyone  - if we can help it - and we separate ourselves to such an extent that hate and fear becomes the overriding factors of our lives.

We are too quick to judge a person, because that person, instead of looking at him or her as an individual, we look at them as being part of a group of people who will terrorise us because of their colour or ethnicity.  Fear in the modern world, even more so now, than before, makes us too quick to judge others, and that will eventually lead to our downfall.

One cannot help but be scared - fearful that our children may go out to play but then, may never come back. What with child murders, drug dealers, and any number of other things that make us fearful for our very lives in this society, we find ourselves trapped, with no way out.

We work, and that is it. We have no time for recreation because we are always fearful to leave the house empty - in case of robberies, we are scared to go to the park, in case we are attacked not just by gangs, but by dogs too. Dog attacks on adults and children have risen steadily over the years until now they have become a major problem in society.

A whole plethora of incidents in this society makes us fearful for our own lives, and those of our family. In this society it is every man for himself, and it is true. Who would go to help out somebody in trouble, if they are lying in the street? There are not many that would these days, and human life seems cheap.

Death is read about every single day, and we bat not an eyelid. It is no longer front page news because it is so common.  with the proliferation of all of the things mentioned, society today is far less tolerant - and far more fearful - than at any other given point in time. We have lost touch with who we are, and in the process we have lost touch with our humanity. This is our own fault and our legacy, because we have created the society that we wanted in the first place.

Autumn returns but with a bit of discontent

Zaka

"Then summer fades and passes and October comes.  We'll smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure."   Thomas Wolfe

In a nice cool evening of September,  I walked along the edge of the stream, the leaves whisper the sound of past and the wild air reveals the arrival of autumn. I don’t know why some people call it “sad season”, may be they think, the year is dying but I love fall. 
With skies a deeper blue, and nights that become suddenly clear and chilled, I love fall  because of the smells that it speaks of. I don’t know why Poet like Faiz Ahmed Faiz cursed this time of the year  in his poetry..

“This is the way that autumn came to the trees:

it stripped them down to the skin,

left their ebony bodies naked.

It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,

scattered them over the ground.

Anyone could trample them out of shape

undisturbed by a single moan of protest.

The birds that herald dreams

were exiled from their song,

each voice torn out of its throat.

They dropped into the dust

even before the hunter strung his bow.

Oh, God of May have mercy.

Bless these withered bodies

with the passion of your resurrection;

make their dead veins flow with blood again.

Give some tree the gift of green again.

Let one bird sing”

My be the poet narrated the half truth about autumn, because everything is half dead. The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves. But there is another way of seeing.  Seeing with the eye of memory, there is colours everywhere, the winds will blow their own freshness into you, and your sorrow will drop way like the leaves of trees. I sit quietly, listening to the falling leaves and wishing miseries of my land vapours like the faded memories….

Beach: more than a swimming place!

Zaka

A view of Hawks Bay beach- Karachi

The human voyage into life is basically feeble, vulnerable, uncontrollable. So they need nature for inspiration and strength. with hectic life such is this, you aren't get many chances to come across beautiful places but if you do get an opportunity, make it count and memorize the ecstatic moments with the camera lens.... 

I've had it and did exactly the same. A week ago, I travelled to the Hawks bay beach, even though I come here before but honestly speaking, I discovered many great activities that can be enjoyed on the beach.

Hawks bay beach is just 20 kilometre away from the City centre. And it is one of the few beaches in the world where green sea turtles come to lay eggs. 

On a glorious sunshiny day, I drove my Mini Pajero with full of food stuff to the beach. On the way through we stopped to fill the air in a tube, which we carried for surfing purpose, the guy in the tyre shop told us that tube is punctured and need a repair. My buddy give him nod to go head, and then we experienced the most astonishing, at least we have seen it for the first time. The tyre shop guy started sewing the pierced part of the tube. When our eyes met, I knew that Beven's thinking was same as mine, that what the hell tyre shop is guy up to? Then the tyre shop guy realized that we are worried about his ability.... 

"Saab hamara roz ka kam he" (sir this is my routine work), said the tyre shop guy, who didn’t look too content with our distrust.

Anyway we enjoyed all day long and learned that spending time at the beach isn't limited to just swimming. There are tons of other great activities that can be enjoyed on the beach. One of them is partying, if you turnout in numbers, you can play music, dance and just have a great time. 

Writing on the sand is another interesting thing as I came across few guys whom wrote something on the sand and then took pictures. They told me that it will last forever. Another thing that we really missed was "Frisbee", this is a classic beach game and it is one that people never get tired of. Well talking about beach, then you can't forget fishing, but everybody knows about it and people have been doing this for centuries.

Building a sandcastle not only helps you pass the time at the beach but also it is really very creative activity, besides that you can troll the beach looking for seashells. Taking the best ones home, so that you can always remember the fun that you had at the beach. 

The beach is a great place for getting good photos and those photos will be a great memory to take back, and the modern gadgets make things really easy these days. Beaches are generally filled with people so you can make new friends. But then you've to be very social, in order to do that. There is no doubt in my mind that beach has been inspiring, so artistic mind people can get very good ideas.

Turning towards some of the romantic things, obviously watching the sunset is the top of all. This is one of the favourite things that I often do at the beach because it is such a fascinating thing to do. By doing so, this is the wonderful opportunity for the daydreamers like me to sit around and just hang out and daydream a bit.

Be careful with your online life

By Zaka

With monitoring software running on the social networking and online job sites, data about you and your activities on the internet can easily be tracked. The troubling fact is that nobody can tell what the trackers did or intends to do with user’s data. With 500 million Facebook, over 100 million Twitter and plenty of other’s social networking and jobs related portals users, the future life on the web is about to unleash.

Traditional expectation of personal privacy came into question as it proved that tiny pieces of data are being mashed together to create a digital profile of people in such detail, one never thought imaginable. Because of that, Facebook forced to change the setting in order to keep the user’s personal information private.

As such concerns have spread; the heat has been turned up under long simmering debated about the limit of online privacy. But for now it’s quite evident that only a big scandal to do with misuse of personal information for the issue to explode.

More than anything else, its user’s responsibility to keep them safe by careful of what they posting. The new technologies paint ever finer portraits of individuals based on their online activities, the greatest risk to privacy online for many users is their own ineptitude. Sites such as Twitter and Facebook encourage the sharing of status updates, travel plans and photographs, making it easier inadvertently to wreck a marriage, friendship or jobs. CNN anchor Octavia Nasr was recent famous casualty of 140 words of Twitter, in her tweet Nasr praised the Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah and lost the job as her tweet received huge criticisms.

I’m not sure in the 3^rd world but certainly in the west, your tweets and posts can and will be held against you in a court of law.

     

Being unsocial: Is that a bad trait?

Zaka

I have been unsocial since, well ever since I can remember, When I was little, I was convinced that I belong to some other place or family, because I always found difficult to fit in my surroundings; later realized I've to be like everyone else. Over the year's, I had tried but still think it's not enough. 

Now days I do live in a bit of shell, made few friends, because it really hard to find trustworthy people. So I prefer social withdrawal. As a result of that I used to hear “RUDE” when people describe me, some say arrogant. I don’t care when people talk like that because lots of social interactions seem pointless to me. Rarely I interested to talk about people, even then for some eccentric reasons people like to talk with me.

One can argue that many people do live that way, then why people create so much fuss about. When I look around, the real successful people aren't those who have great social circle rather it depends on hard work. ……..