Thread by @polina_marinova

There's good, there's great, there's exceptional — and then there's Lionel Messi.

Thanks to his speed, control, and mesmerizing ability to shoot the ball into the net, Messi has become a legend.

This is his story 👇👇👇

Messi has been playing soccer since he was in kindergarten. When his mother would send him off to run errands, he took a ball with him. If he didn't have one, he would make one out of plastic bags.

Nothing stood in his way.

In 1997, people began noticing that Messi appeared tiny on the field.

At 10 years old, he looked nearly two years younger than his teammates.

The following year, doctors diagnosed him with a growth hormone deficiency and prescribed him nightly hormone injections.

Messi was the smallest boy on the field, but he learned how to be faster, smoother, and more agile than his larger competitors.

"His reflexes haven't changed," Messi's dad says. "He was always so short, but so fast. It was very difficult for another boy to take the ball away."

At 5-foot-7, Messi continues to sprint past his competitors and score laser-precise goals time and time again.

To the world, Messi's health troubles were career-ending.

To him, it was just another obstacle he had to overcome on his road to greatness.

"It took me 17 years and 114 days to be an overnight success.”

Although Messi was only 17 when he became a professional footballer, his road to success was neither easy nor straightforward.

Read it in full here: theprofile.substack.com/p/lionel-messi