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Lionel Messi  Actions

Argentine-born football player
Also known as: Leo Messi, Lionel Andrés Messi
Written by Jack Rollin
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Oct 13, 2024 • Article History

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Lionel Messi Lionel Messi, December 2022.

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Lionel Messi (born June 24, 1987,

Rosario, Argentina) is an Argentine-born
football (soccer) player who received a
record-setting eight Ballon d’Or awards as
the world’s top male player (2009–12,
2015, 2019, 2021, and 2023). In 2022 he
helped Argentina win the Fédération
Internationale de Football Association
(FIFA)’s World Cup.

Early life
Messi started playing football as a boy and
in 1995 joined the youth team of Newell’s
Old Boys (a Rosario-based top-division
football club). Messi’s phenomenal skills
garnered the attention of prestigious clubs
on both sides of the Atlantic. At age 13
Messi and his family relocated to
Barcelona, and he began playing for FC
Barcelona’s under-14 team. He scored 21
goals in 14 games for the junior team, and
he quickly graduated through the higher-
level teams until at age 16 he was given his
informal debut with FC Barcelona in a
friendly match.

Quick Facts 
In full: Lionel Andrés Messi

Also called: Leo Messi

Born: June 24, 1987, Rosario, Argentina (age 37)

Awards And Honors: Olympic Games

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Club play
In the 2004–05 season Messi, then 17,
became the youngest official player and
goal scorer in the Spanish La Liga (the
country’s highest division of football).
Though only 5 feet 7 inches (1.7 metres) tall
and weighing 148 pounds (67 kg), he was
strong, well-balanced, and versatile on the
field. Naturally left-footed, quick, and
precise in control of the ball, Messi was a
keen pass distributor and could readily
thread his way through packed defenses. In
2005 he was granted Spanish citizenship,
an honour greeted with mixed feelings by
the fiercely Catalan supporters of
Barcelona. The next year Messi and
Barcelona won the Champions League (the
European club championship) title.

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Messi’s play continued to rapidly improve

over the years, and by 2008 he was one of
the most dominant players in the world,
finishing second to Manchester United’s
Cristiano Ronaldo in the voting for the
2008 Ballon d’Or. In early 2009 Messi
capped off a spectacular 2008–09 season
by helping FC Barcelona capture the club’s
first “treble” (winning three major
European club titles in one season): the
team won the La Liga championship, the
Copa del Rey (Spain’s major domestic cup),
and the Champions League title. He scored
38 goals in 51 matches during that season,
and he bested Ronaldo in the balloting for
both the Ballon d’Or and FIFA’s world
player of the year by a record margin.
During the 2009–10 season Messi scored
34 goals in domestic games as Barcelona
repeated as La Liga champions. He earned
the Golden Shoe award as Europe’s leading
scorer, and he received another Ballon d’Or
(the award was known as the FIFA Ballon
d’Or in 2010–15).

Lionel Messi Lionel Messi, August 2016.

Messi led Barcelona to La Liga and

Champions League titles the following
season, which helped him capture an
unprecedented third consecutive world
player of the year award. In March 2012 he
netted his 233rd goal for Barcelona,
becoming the club’s all-time leading scorer
in La Liga play when only 24 years old. He
finished Barcelona’s 2011–12 season (which
included another Copa del Rey win) with 73
goals in all competitions, breaking Gerd
Müller’s 39-year-old record for single-
season goals in a major European football
league. His landmark season led to his
being named the 2012 world player of the
year, which made Messi the first player to
win the honour four times. His 46 La Liga
goals in 2012–13 led the league, and
Barcelona captured another domestic top-
division championship that season. In 2014
he set the overall Barcelona goal record
when he scored his 370th goal as a member
of the team. That same year he also broke
the career scoring records for play in both
the Champions League (with 72 goals) and
La Liga (with 253 goals).

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Lionel Messi Lionel Messi, December 2018.

Messi helped Barcelona capture another

treble during the 2014–15 season, leading
the team with 43 goals scored over the
course of the campaign, which resulted in
his fifth world player of the year honour. He
scored 41 goals across all competitions for
Barcelona in 2015–16, and the club won the
La Liga title and the Copa del Rey during
that season. Messi topped that with 53
goals for Barcelona in 2016–17, leading the
team to another Copa del Rey title. In
2017–18 he scored 45 goals, and Barcelona
won the La Liga–Copa del Rey double once
again. Messi scored 51 goals across all
domestic competitions in 2018–19 as
Barcelona won another La Liga
championship. In late 2019 he won his
sixth career Ballon d’Or and was named
FIFA’s best male player of the year. In the
2020–21 season, Barcelona claimed the
Copa del Rey title, the seventh of Messi’s
career. He became a free agent in 2021, and
financial issues—some of which were the
result of La Liga rules—largely prevented
him from re-signing with Barcelona. He left
the club after setting a number of records;
notably, he was the leading goal scorer in
the league’s history (474).

Later in 2021 Messi signed with Paris St.-

Germain (PSG), where he joined superstars
Kylian Mbappé and Neymar, and that year
he received yet another Ballon d’Or. He
helped PSG win the Ligue 1 title in each of
his two seasons with the team. In 2023
Messi joined Inter Miami of Major League
Soccer.

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International career
Despite his dual citizenship and
professional success in Spain, Messi’s ties
with his homeland remained strong, and he
was a key member of various Argentine
national teams from 2005. He played on
Argentina’s victorious 2005 FIFA World
Youth Championship squad, represented
the country in the 2006 World Cup, and
scored two goals in five matches as
Argentina swept to the gold medal at the
Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Messi helped
Argentina reach the 2010 World Cup
quarterfinals, where the team was
eliminated by Germany for the second
consecutive time in World Cup play. At the
2014 World Cup, Messi put on a dazzling
display, scoring four goals and almost
single-handedly propelling an offense-
deficient Argentina team through the group
stage and into the knockout rounds, where
Argentina then advanced to the World Cup
final for the first time in 24 years.
Argentina lost that contest 1–0 to Germany,
but Messi nevertheless won the Golden Ball
award as the tournament’s best player.
During the 2016 Copa América Centenario
tournament, he netted his 55th
international goal to break Gabriel
Batistuta’s Argentine scoring record.

Argentina celebrating its 2022 World Cup

victory Team captain Lionel Messi (holding trophy)
and other members of Argentina's national team ...(more)
after…
winning the 2022 Men's World Cup.
After Argentina was defeated in the Copa
final—the team’s third consecutive finals
loss in a major tournament—Messi said
that he was quitting the national team, but
his short-lived “retirement” lasted less than
two months before he announced his return
to the Argentine team. At the 2018 World
Cup, he helped an overmatched Argentine
side reach the knockout stage, where they
were eliminated by eventual champion
France in their first match. After a third-
place finish at the 2019 Copa América,
Messi led Argentina to victory in the
tournament two years later, and he received
the Golden Ball award. His success
continued at the 2022 World Cup. There he
guided Argentina to the finals, where he
scored two goals—and made a penalty kick
during the shootout—to help defeat France.
Messi won the World Cup’s Golden Ball,
becoming the first male player to receive
that award twice. In addition, his
outstanding play in the tournament was
instrumental in Messi winning his eighth
Ballon d’Or in 2023.

Other activities and legal

issues
Off the field, Messi was one of the biggest
athletic stars in the world. In addition to
earning a football salary that was
frequently, with Ronaldo’s, one of the two
largest athletes’ salaries in all professional
sports, he was an extremely successful
product pitchman, notably for the
sportswear company Adidas. In 2013 Messi
and his father (who handled his son’s
finances) were charged with tax fraud and
accused of using overseas shell companies
to avoid paying €4.2 million in Spanish
taxes on endorsement earnings. Despite
subsequently paying €5 million to the
Spanish state, the pair were nevertheless
ordered to stand trial on the charges in
2016. In July of that year, Messi and his
father were each given suspended 21-month
prison sentences (first-time offenders in
Spain are given suspended sentences if the
duration is under two years) and were fined
€2 million and €1.5 million, respectively.

Jack Rollin

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Sports & Recreation  Soccer

Diego Maradona  Actions

Argentine soccer player
Also known as: Diego Armando Maradona
Written and fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Sep 9, 2024 • Article History

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Diego Maradona Diego Maradona, 1986.

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Diego Maradona (born October 30,

1960, Lanus, Buenos Aires, Argentina—
died November 25, 2020, Tigre, Buenos
Aires) was an Argentine football (soccer)
player who is generally regarded as the top
footballer of the 1980s and one of the
greatest of all time. Renowned for his
ability to control the ball and create scoring
opportunities for himself and others, he led
club teams to championships in Argentina,
Italy, and Spain, and he starred on the
Argentine national team that won the 1986
World Cup.

Maradona displayed football talent early,

and at age eight he joined Las Cebollitas
(“The Little Onions”), a boys’ team that
went on to win 136 consecutive games and
a national championship. He signed with
Argentinos Juniors at age 14 and made his
first-division debut in 1976, 10 days before
his 16th birthday. Only four months later he
made his debut with the national team,
becoming the youngest Argentine ever to do
so. Although he was excluded from the 1978
World Cup-winning squad because it was
felt that he was still too young, the next
year he led the national under-20 team to a
Junior World Cup championship.

Quick Facts 
In full: Diego Armando Maradona

Born: October 30, 1960, Lanus, Buenos Aires,

Argentina

Died: November 25, 2020, Tigre, Buenos Aires (aged

60)

Awards And Honors: World Cup (1986)

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Diego Maradona Diego Maradona (right) of Argentina

and a South Korean defender in a 1986 World Cup
football (soccer) game.

Maradona moved to Boca Juniors in 1981

and immediately helped them gain the
championship. He then moved to Europe,
playing with FC Barcelona in 1982 (and
winning the Spanish Cup in 1983) and then
SSC Napoli (1984–91), where he enjoyed
great success, raising the traditionally weak
Naples side to the heights of Italian
football. With Maradona the team won the
league title and cup in 1987 and the league
title again in 1990. Maradona’s stint with
Napoli came to an end when he was
arrested in Argentina for cocaine
possession and received a 15-month
suspension from playing football. Next he
played for Sevilla in Spain and Newell’s Old
Boys in Argentina. In 1995 he returned to
Boca Juniors and played his last match on
October 25, 1997.

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Maradona’s career with the Argentine

national team included World Cup
appearances in 1982, 1986, 1990, and 1994.
He dominated the 1986 competition in
Mexico. In a 2–1 quarterfinal victory over
England, he scored two of the most
memorable goals in World Cup history. The
first was scored with his hand (the referee
mistakenly thought the ball had struck his
head), a goal now remembered as the
“Hand of God” goal. The second occurred
after Maradona gained possession of the
ball at midfield and dribbled through a
pack of English defenders and past the
keeper before depositing the ball in the
goal. He did not finish the 1994 World Cup,
because he tested positive for the drug
ephedrine and was again suspended.
Maradona also played on South American
championship-winning teams in 1987 and
1989.

A stocky and tenacious midfielder,

Maradona became a hero of the lower
classes of Argentina (from which he hailed)
and of southern Italy, where he led Napoli
to victories over the wealthier northern
clubs. He played 490 official club games
during his 21-year professional career,
scoring 259 goals; for Argentina he played
91 games and scored 34 goals. An Internet
poll conducted by the Fédération
Internationale de Football Association
named Maradona the top player of the 20th
century.

In 2008 Maradona was named head coach

of the Argentine national team. Shortly
after leading Argentina to the quarterfinals
of the 2010 World Cup, he and the
country’s football governing body could not
agree on a contract extension, and his
tenure as the team’s head coach ended. In
2011 Maradona was hired to coach the
United Arab Emirates club Al Wasl.
However, the team struggled, and
Maradona was fired the following year. He
worked for several other clubs before
becoming coach of Mexico’s Dorados de
Sinaloa in 2018.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This article was most recently revised and updated

by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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