Then he adds: “Anyone would have said the same.” It took him seven or eight minutes to get round and by the time he arrived, his mind was made up: “We have to sign this kid right now.” “After two minutes, I knew,” Rexach says. He arrived with the game under way and strolled round the pitch to take up his place, first behind the goal and then on one of the benches. A game was arranged for the start of October so that the technical secretary could be there. Messi impressed and he stayed until Rexach returned. That day, Rexach was at the Olympic Games in Sydney. In the dressing room, they looked at him and could not believe how small he was on the pitch, they looked at him and couldn’t believe how good he was. Messi did not reach five feet and he changed in silence. The following day, Messi trained with the Barcelona youth team, Cesc Fàbregas and Gerard Piqué among them. They put Messi up in the Hotel Plaza, at the foot of Montjuïc, where escalators head up the hill to the Olympic stadium. Minguella knew: he was the one who had brought Maradona to Barcelona 20 years earlier. Minguella had told Rexach, Barcelona’s technical director, that this kid was like Diego Maradona. Together with Josep Maria Minguella, they had arranged for Messi to have a trial at Barcelona. Messi, aged 13, was flying across the Atlantic with his father, Jorge, and Fabián Soldini, the player’s agent and Gaggioli’s partner. On Sunday, 17 September 2000, Gaggioli was waiting for Messi at El Prat airport in Barcelona. Every now and then he takes it out and shows it off carefully. Horacio Gaggioli still has the serviette hidden away somewhere, although there have been calls to place it in Barcelona’s museum. No, Rexach says he will go down in Barcelona’s history because one day he signed Lionel Messi – on a serviette. But that’s not why he says he will go down in history. He played for the first team for 17 years and has been coach, assistant coach, technical director and presidential adviser. Born and raised in Pedralbes, the smart neighbourhood that lies up the hill from the Camp Nou, Rexach joined Barcelona at the age of 12 and he has spent almost half a century there, on and off. “I’ll go down in Barcelona’s history,” he says.
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