Five-Year-Old Afghan Boy In Plastic Lionel Messi Shirt To Meet His Barcelona Hero
Murtaza Ahmadi, 5, will finally get his wish to meet his hero, Lionel Messi, after photos of him wearing a handmade plastic shirt with Messi’s name and number on it went viral on Facebook and Twitter.
Photos of 5-year-old Murtaza recently went viral on social media, with the boy wearing a plastic shirt in the Argentinian national team’s colors, emblazoned with Lionel Messi’s name and his team number.
Meet Murtaza Ahmadi: Lionel Messi’s ‘biggest fan’ from Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/e6wXNOJUTp
— Murtaza Ahmadi-AFG (@MurtazaMessi2) January 28, 2016
In a recent report on the Inquisitr, we heard the story of Murtaza’s handmade shirt with the name Lionel Messi and the number 10 emblazoned on it, and of his strong desire to meet his footballer idol. The photos had gone viral on Facebook and Twitter last month, and it was theorized that he might finally get his wish and travel to Barcelona, Spain, to meet his hero.
Young Murtaza, who hails from the central Afghan province of Ghazni, even has his own Twitter handle, @MurtazaMessi2, and a visit to his Twitter feed shows many images of the young footballer wearing his famed shirt, along with videos of him playing football himself.
Murtaza Ahmadi: “I love Messi and football. I will meet him one day. I want to become like Messi”.. pic.twitter.com/l2tJPIXAyW
— Leo Messi (@messi10stats) February 1, 2016
Now, some good news has been heard from the Afghan Football Federation, who have confirmed on Monday that Murtaza will finally get his wish and meet the Barcelona star at Camp Nou at a date to still be decided.
According to Al Jazeera, Messi — who won his fifth FIFA Ballon D’or award recently — and the Barcelona team have since been in touch with the Afghan Football Federation. According to their spokesman, Syed Ali Kazemi, Lionel Messi’s management team has expressed their interest in meeting the 5-year-old fan.
“We’ve been contacted by Messi’s management team and they have expressed their interest in meeting the boy.”
Kazemi went on to say they are doing their best to coordinate the meeting between Murtaza and Lionel Messi, but that the date and venue is not yet confirmed. However, there is definitely a chance for Murtaza to fly to Spain to meet with his idol.
Kazemi expressed the passion that the young boy has for playing football and that the federation will do everything in their capacity to train Murtaza to be part of the Afghanistan football team.
As for Murtaza himself, he told Al Jazeera on Monday: “I love Messi and football. I will meet him one day. I want to become like him.”
Afghan boy who went viral with plastic bag Messi jersey may get to meet his Barca herohttps://t.co/aEPMKOph2O pic.twitter.com/LVOMb5BRjW
— AP Sports (@AP_Sports) February 2, 2016
It turns out it was Murtaza’s brother, Homayoun, who made the shirt for the boy and wrote the name Messi and the number 10 on the back of a plastic bag. Murtaza said he found the bag in the Argentinian colors and ran to him, asking him to make a jersey out of it. Homayoun said he was more than happy to make the shirt for him.
“We can’t even imagine buying the original Messi jersey. We just can’t afford it so, to make my brother happy, I made a shirt out of that plastic bag for him.”
It is not certain how long Murtaza will have to wait to meet his idol, Lionel Messi, as so far, no official date or location has been set. According to Newsweek, Barcelona is yet to comment on the subject of the meeting between Lionel Messi and Murtaza Ahmadi.
[Photo by AP Photo/Rahmat Gul]
