The son of Jorge and Celia Messi looked like a future football great to everyone who watched him play. Clubs waited in line to see him because he was swift and skilled and scored goals like they were going out of style.

Next, they encountered Lionel, his younger brother. As they say, the rest is history.

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‘Rodrigo was a good player and there was a time when people thought he was better than Leo,’ recalled Oscar Lopez, the pair’s first coach at Grandoli Sports Centre No 8 on the dusty outskirts of Rosario, 185 miles west of Buenos Aires. ‘But he didn’t have the same mental strength and focus as Leo. That was the difference.’

Grandoli is the quintessential setting for a football-related rags-to-riches tale; it’s a languid, impoverished neighborhood where residents sip mate outside their tower blocks, stray dogs laze in the sun, and the occasional horse and cart pass by.

Not dangerous during the day, but the kind of location you should avoid going at night. The sports center and its football field, where the grass has mostly worn away, are located in the middle of everything. Boys go up and down it nonstop, wanting to be the next big thing like the phenomenon who made his debut here.

‘He was four years old, we were putting a team together and I was one short in the age group above him,’ said Lopez. ‘I asked his mother if it would be OK to put him in the team because his grandmother had urged me to. She laughed and said no, especially because of the size of the older boys.

‘But we convinced her. So we put the boy on the pitch and he just sat on the floor playing with stones. Then the ball came his way, he jumped up, controlled it and started dribbling away. He was incredible.

‘He didn’t score that day but he did in the second game and from then on he couldn’t stop. Everyone wanted to play against him to try to stop him. He seemed to create pictures of what he wanted to do in his head and then make them reality on the pitch. He was just born with this talent. You can’t teach it.’

Messi was now addicted to football. He dazzled on the Grandoli young squad, made jokes about using a coke can as a ball during break time at school, and spent hours at home kicking around a ball while his siblings played in the paddling pool.

His parents and siblings still reside in the family house, which is located approximately 15 blocks from Grandoli on a small, unassuming street that resembles Coronation Street in Argentina. Due to the security gates and videophone that provide the Messis some privacy, this two-story home is now the most conspicuous one on Estado de Israel Street. Messi’s primary school is a five-minute stroll across several football pitches.

‘My overriding memory of him is kicking a ball around between classes,’ said his maths teacher, Andrea Sosa, at General Las Heras No 66 school. ‘He wasn’t brilliant at maths but he was conscientious and did all his work without any problems. He was very shy, he barely spoke and he was the smallest in the class.’

It is hardly surprising that there are many recollections of being short and bashful. Upon seeing his 11-year-old end-of-school report, where kids are graded on a 10-point scale for every subject, Messi’s level of obsession with football is evident. His scores of eight for music and art hint at the kind of ingenuity we’ve grown accustomed to in a Barcelona shirt, while his six out of tens for science, math, and Spanish were decent. It goes without saying that he received a 10 in PE.

Young star: Messi in his youth team

‘He was six or seven when I taught him,’ said one PE teacher. ‘It was obvious he was going to be something special. The kids play football a lot with cola cans during their breaks and I was used to seeing a lot of good ones. But he was something else. The other thing I remember is that he was very caring. When he came into school he would always come and find me to give me a kiss.’

The words caring and humble crop up time and time again when talking to the people who knew Messi as a boy. The credit seems to belong to his close-knit family, quiet people who continue to shun the limelight. While his mum and dad worked as a cleaner and in a steel factory respectively, it was down to Messi’s grandma Celia and his aunt Marcela to take him to football and look after him. It ensured a very close bond.

Marcela is still attached to the school – her son finished there just last year – and accompanied Messi on a return there in 2007. ‘Marcela called me. It was 4.10pm and she said Lionel wanted to come to the school,’ said headteacher Graciela Riboldi.

‘Within five minutes the whole place had gone mad. When he arrived, he was mobbed. He couldn’t move an inch. Everyone was screaming his name. He went round each and every classroom to talk to the children. He was brilliant but still very shy. He didn’t move from his aunt’s side.

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‘He was like a little boy at school all over again. He had photos with every child, he answered all their questions and then he tried to leave. As he did, the parents waiting outside went mad for him, too. He finally left at seven o’clock.

‘Then in 2008 Marcela called me to tell me Lionel was going to send me some money for the school. I thought he would give us 500 pesos (£100). As it was, his dad turned up with 7,500 euros (£6,500) in cash. We bought tables, we re did the playground, we bought a new television, a keyboard, everything. A short time after that there was a school trip to Mendoza and one family couldn’t afford it so we were able to pay for the boy to go. All thanks to Messi.’

As his reputation grew in youth football, Messi was spotted by then Newell’s Old Boys No 2 Claudio Vivas, who was working for future Argentina boss Marcelo Bielsa. Along he went to their training centre in the heart of Rosario where Gabriel Digerolamo was putting a team together.