The house isn’t living its best days at the moment, apparently.
Leo Messi was born in a middle-class neighbourhood in Rosario called ‘La Bajada’. His family owned a two-storey house on Israel street.
La Bajada, the poor area of Rosario, central Argentina, where he was born and spent his first 13 years. The district is too dangerous to be a magnet for Messi fans – a tense battleground for rival drugs gangsters, few people are seen out and there is a prevailing sense of insecurity.
If you were to visit the neighbourhood without knowing the facts, there’s no way you’d spot the house where the legendary footballer was born. The houseis closed off by shut curtains and protected by railing, with no sign indicatingthat Leo spent his childhood years there.
Although it looks abandoned, it’s known that the Messi family still own the building, it’s just that no one lives there, according to Minichi.
Today there are murals to the football star, with telegraph poles and drains painted to look like his No10 shirt, but back then his house was just one more modest concrete building in the maze of dusty streets.
Although the house bears no signs of the Barcelona star having lived there, you can find multiple murals of the Argentine on the Israel street. Parts of thesidewalks are painted in white and blue, the national team colours, with Leo’sjersey number on it.
Lionel Messi dazzled Rosario from the age of four with his prodigious talent – flourishing on the scruffy, sun-scorched pitches in gang-ridden neighbourhood to become arguably the greatest footballer of all time
The pitch where Messi honed his skills as a child
On the edge of the neighbourhood, the football field – home to junior club Grandoli – is as unkempt as it was 20 years ago.
It was here, in 1991, that Messi’s grandmother Celia convinced a reluctant coach named Salvador Aparicio to put him on their team, despite being younger and much smaller than his opponents.
