Victor Vazquez is a former professional footballer from Spain, an MLS Cup champion with Toronto FC in 2017, who came through Barcelona’s academy alongside Lionel Messi. 

When I was 13, Barcelona were not used to recruiting kids from abroad. 

Then, out of the blue, a kid from Argentina arrived at La Masia.

It was the autumn of 2000 when coaching staff introduced him to us before a training session and said he would come on trial. On that first day, our manager for the Infantil B team (under-13 level), Rodolfo Borrell, tried to give him a proper test. 

Borrell called on the team’s most intelligent player. “Cesc (Fabregas), you are defending the new kid in the next training drill,” he said. 

It was an exercise to practise attacking transitions, ending with a forward taking on a defender in a one-vs-one situation. Fabregas was the on-pitch mastermind of our 1987-born generation at La Masia, one of our best players (and one who went on to star for Arsenal, Spain and Barcelona).

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But let me tell you, Fabregas was helpless. That Argentine guy tore him to pieces in each of the three one-vs-ones they had. 

This was the first ‘Wow’ moment I recall. That day, I told myself: “OK, I am playing with a kid named Lionel Messi, and I am not going to forget that name anytime soon.”

The following day, Borrell made us go through the same training drill, but this time selected our best defender. “Gerard (Pique, who would start the finals as Spain won the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012), you mark him today, and please make sure he does not have an easy job. Do whatever you need to,” he said. 

It was more of the same — the way Messi drove the ball forward, glued to his feet, and managed to produce that final flick as the defender tried to tackle him. It is standard practice for him now, but that was also true at 13. 

Messi playing for the Barcelona first team alongside Fabregas (far left) and Pique (second right) (Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images)

Messi was transformed on a football pitch. Off it, he was incredibly shy. He barely socialised when he arrived, changed in a corner of the dressing room and did not waste words.

That week on trial turned into a permanent move very quickly, but he had a rocky start to life in Barcelona. For five months, he was not allowed to play competitive games due to paperwork issues, so he could only train with us or appear in friendlies. On March 7, 2001, Messi finally made his debut in a league match against Catalan side Amposta. He came off the bench and scored. 

The following week, he played a friendly with the age group above us at Barca, but there was an unfortunate plot twist. After a clash with an opponent, Messi broke his leg; a fibula fracture in his left leg. 

It was a huge blow for him. We did not see him in Barcelona for a while after that — he went back to Argentina for some time. The club told us he would miss the remainder of the season and that they preferred Messi to go back home. We wondered if he’d even return, and what the effects of such an injury at a young age might be.

An outsider might argue he was in the best football academy in the world, playing for a club who facilitated a home for his family and gave him a great education. But you can’t even imagine what it is like for a 13-year-old kid, with an introverted character, to leave his home behind with his dad and go to the other side of the world searching for a dream. 

He did not know anyone. When he arrived, he was not allowed to play football because of those bureaucratic problems. When those were solved, he broke his leg. When he came back from Argentina, he had to fight to adapt to a new culture, make new friends and find ways to be happy.

I have been a footballer for more than a decade, played abroad for many years, and now I am a father of a 12-year-old. Let me tell you: this is not easy. At all. 

Messi never had it easy.

He returned for the final few months of his recovery process, and was back on the pitch the following season, 2001-02.

At the beginning of the campaign with the Infantil A team (under-14), he was not starting every game. We were one of the best La Masia generations ever — Fabregas and Pique can vouch for that — but, at that age, we felt unstoppable. 

I ended up as under-13s top scorer with more than 60 goals. The other forward, Marc Pedraza, scored about 50. We beat city rivals Espanyol in the league, despite their team being a year older than ours — something that barely ever happened. 

After the injury, Messi needed a bit of time to find his way into the side.

That season is also when I started to become more aware of the hormone treatment he was going through. He was still that tiny, silky attacker when he returned, while the others and I were growing at a different pace.

Messi had been following a medical plan, financed by Barca, in which he was given injections with hormones to stimulate growth from a very young age. I think he started even before I got to fully know him. I never saw him take the injections — it happened every night at his home, usually administered by his dad or a club doctor. 

Messi missed some training sessions because he felt dizzy after the injections. Some mornings, he could not come to school either, as he felt unwell. It was all part of a tough process, and some people might not even be aware of that. But what Messi had to go through was far from easy. 

He and I clicked thanks to school trips. We were the same age, went to the same class and took the same Barca bus to go to the city’s Lleo XIII academy, which all the residents of La Masia still attend. Alongside another team-mate, Rafa Blazquez, we were a bit of a rebel trio. 

The old La Masia building at Barcelona (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)

I lived in the old La Masia building, like a lot of Barca academy players, but Messi and his family stayed in an apartment in the city. It was located on Gran Via de Carles III, which was walking distance from our facilities and the Camp Nou.

Apart from football, we started bonding over our Discmans — remember those? We sat next to each other on the school bus and listened to our favourite music. Messi had his Argentinian tunes on all day; he liked cumbia (a kind of music from Latin America). I showed him the most famous Spanish bands at the time. We exchanged CDs and had a laugh.

We were not great in the classroom, I won’t lie. We just wanted to focus on football. The club stressed how important it was for us to pass all our exams — but the best moment of the day was when school finished and we jumped onto the bus, straight back to La Masia. 

Messi stayed with us and had lunch at the club’s facilities, with all the Barca players of different ages. Then, we had a few hours to spare before training at 5.30pm every day. 

At the start, Messi preferred to walk back to his apartment and rest a bit but, as time went by, he often chose to stay with us all afternoon. He would come to our bedroom and take a nap there before training — or we would start a kickabout next to La Masia with players from the various age groups.

Those three years we spent together at La Masia are certainly some of the best of my life. It was like a 24-hour school trip every day, every week. With my best mates. 

The 2003-2004 campaign was when he took the club by storm. He had left his injury behind and ended the previous season like a rocket. That June, Messi turned 16. Barca decided to promote him to the Juvenil B team, the under-18s. His manager there was Guillermo Hoyos — who is today his coach at Inter Miami.

Messi was so unstoppable that, after three games, they brought him up to the Juvenil A, the under-19s. The same thing happened there. A few weeks later, he had been promoted to senior football.

At the time, the club had two reserve teams: Barca C, playing in the Spanish fourth tier, and Barca B in the third tier.

Messi was sent to Barca C first, and scored goals easily. But Barcelona became worried as local teams filled with veteran players were going after him week in, week out and dishing out particularly harsh treatment. After five games, they promoted him to Barca B, because the football was more technical and less physical a division above. 

In November 2003, he made his unofficial first-team debut in a friendly against Porto. Messi played with five different Barca sides in a season — something nobody has ever done since. 

Given how effortlessly he went up the ranks, I remember speaking with team-mates from our age group at the time and agreeing that, as soon as he made it to the first team, he would have no problems in reaching those levels. 

Barca just needed to help him with minor tweaks. For instance, Messi suffered a lot of muscular injuries in his first full season with the first team. The medical and nutritional departments made him follow a strict diet, forbidding him from having fizzy drinks — which he loved — among other things. 

Messi celebrates one of his first goals for Barcelona at senior level in 2006 (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)

Now, my son often asks me about those days, about how good Messi was and how he behaved. 

Something I will never forget, and which speaks volumes about his values, is that, no matter how many levels he was playing above us, he never lost touch with our generation. 

Messi would come to watch us at every home match he could, from being 15 right up until he became a Barca star and I was playing my first games for the B team. We usually spotted him sitting in the stands, or even standing next to the corner flag — and always cheering for us. 

He would also join us after games sometimes, and we kept the same plans we had as kids: going for a walk at the L’illa Diagonal shopping centre in Barcelona, or going bowling at Pedralbes, a district close to the Camp Nou. 

I managed to break into the first team when Pep Guardiola was in charge. Messi was already the best player in the world. I was part of the squad that won the Champions League in 2011. But eventually I had to leave and build my own career abroad. I don’t regret any of it — I’ve had the best experiences of my life thanks to football. 

I retired last year, but I still have a moment from 2023 in the back of my head. It was in the final year of my contract at Major League Soccer side Toronto FC, a club I loved and where I became an MLS champion in 2017. 

Victor Vazquez in action for Toronto (Jeff Chevrier/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

One of the last games I started was against Messi’s Inter Miami — we lost 4-0. I had goosebumps as I walked onto the pitch alongside my childhood friend. We chatted before and after the match, and I could see the joy of that kid in his eyes. He must have seen the same with me. 

I would have done anything to stay a bit longer in MLS and join Miami, ending my career alongside that boy I started dreaming with. I did not hesitate to tell my agent that! But my legs were pretty much gone by then. It was too late. 

I wasn’t able to play with Messi again, but the dreams we had together as kids had already come true. 

With each passing summer, the football world grows more surprised by jumps in transfer fees.

Elliot Anderson’s £116million move from Nottingham Forest to Manchester City is this summer’s yard stick, with The Athletic reporting this week that Paris Saint-Germain believe their winger Bradley Barcola should be valued at a much higher price.

PSG do not feel the need to sell the 23-year-old after Milan signed Goncalo Ramos from them for a club-record fee (in the region of €70m). Barcola, however, has been reluctant to extend his two-year deal as he desires more starts. But if he were to push for a move, the winger would not be short of suitors. Arsenal’s admiration of the France international is known while Liverpool’s interest was reported in mid-June.

So, is Barcola worth more than the £116m City are paying Forest for Anderson?

From a pure financial perspective on player values, The Athletic has enlisted the help of Twenty First Group (TFG), a sports intelligence firm which includes high-profile clubs, leagues and more among its client base.

Note that:

• ‘Value’ does not equate to ‘price’.
• What Twenty First Group value a player at may differ materially from the same player’s projected price.
• Value is driven by intrinsic matters, agnostic of market factors — age, position, experience, to name just three.
• A player’s price incorporates aspects which impact what his existing club could expect to receive for him in a given transaction — think remaining contract length, wealth of the buyer, wealth of the seller, and so on.
• Value, not price, has been used here.

In Barcola’s case, TFG have valued him at £100m for buying Premier League clubs, considering he is a top talent with two or more years left on his contract, as well as the ability to play off both flanks and up front. This valuation does not include market factors that could dictate an eventual price such as the real-time wants and needs of who is buying and selling, which could see PSG demand much more, but it helps put us in the ballpark.

When viewed through the lens of the most expensive wingers to sign for Premier League clubs (Jack Grealish for £100m in 2021, Antony for £82m in 2022, Jadon Sancho for £73m 2021, Nicolas Pepe for £72m in 2019 and Bryan Mbeumo for £71m in 2025), TFG’s valuation does not feel out of place.

Looking back to last summer, Liverpool signed Florian Wirtz for €136.3million (£116m) and Alexander Isak for a deal worth £130million ($176m).

Nobody can say whether a player is worth their transfer fee until they have played for their new club, but opinions before then will come from that individual’s CV, and Barcola’s is interesting.

Before the World Cup, some may have viewed the winger as a back-up option for PSG and France, but that is a narrow view of a player who is part of the best attacking forces in club and international football.

In his three seasons at PSG, Barcola made 26 starts in 39 appearances in 2023-24, 44 starts in 58 appearances in 2024-25 and 35 starts in 48 appearances in 2025-26.

The 2024-25 campaign was his strongest with 21 goals and 18 assists, but increasingly, discussions around Barcola have centred around inconsistencies in front of goal. Some of his biggest misses have come in the biggest games. He could have ended Arsenal’s Champions League hopes late in a semi-final first leg in 2025, but dragged a tame effort wide after nice link-up play.

His missed effort against Sweden in the World Cup this week after baiting two defenders also had flashes of his Champions League final miss against Inter last year.

But Barcola tends to find the net as often as he should over the course of a season. He scored 11 league goals from an expected goals tally of 10.9 in 2025-26, and 14 league goals from an xG of 13.6 the season before.

How the numbers come about is more important than the raw data, though.

He may not be as deadly as PSG team-mates Ousmane Dembele, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desire Doue, but Barcola has an electricity in his play that is refreshing in a football climate where wingers head towards their own goal more often

Some trends that emerge with his goals are being in the right place at the right time, or using his pace to run in behind like he did to double France’s group-stage lead against Senegal last month. There is thought behind the runs he makes, as below you can see he recognises the opportunity to sprint into space as soon as Adrien Rabiot receives the ball, but also a nice drop of the shoulder to pull a defender out of position to burst past him in the next example.

There are questions over whether he would be granted the same space to exploit by Premier League defences, but that speed may also help to create more chances from breakaways.

In this year’s Champions League final, Barcola came off the bench and threatened Arsenal with two bursts in behind William Saliba late on. Liverpool are more accustomed to playing on the break, scoring seven league goals from fast breaks last season compared to Arsenal’s four, so adding Barcola to these situations would benefit both teams.

While it is often his dribbling that takes the breath away, Barcola is also capable of special strikes. He scored two goals from outside the box in a 2-0 win over Lens early last season, but a different pair of goals stood out more.

Quizzed about his inconsistent finishing before facing Chelsea in the Champions League round of 16, Barcola was blasé in front of the press, doing his talking on the pitch. One touch, and a bang with his left foot arrowing the ball into the roof of the net put PSG 1-0 up. A week later, one touch with his left foot, and a bang with his right, and PSG were 2-0 up on the night (en route to a 8-2 aggregate win).

As an Arsenal writer, the second goal brought flashbacks of a similar finish against Chelsea from Thierry Henry (both below).

While Barcola’s finishing levels out with expectations each season, maybe scoring harder chances to make up for the easier ones he has missed, there are other interesting trends about his output.

In his last season at Lyon and first with PSG, looking from a 10-game rolling average, the winger overperformed his xG for most of the season. In the last two years, when PSG have done the Ligue 1 and Champions League double twice, Barcola tends to overperform his xG in the first half of the season and underperform after the New Year.

That factors into some of his memorable misses coming in the latter stages of the Champions League, but also shows that those misses should not define him.

The majority of forwards fluctuate in their stats, and that is true in Barcola’s assist numbers from the last two seasons.

He created two chances per 90 minutes in Ligue 1 in each, but the volatility was shown in the contrast between his expected assists (xA) and actual assists. In 2024-25, his xA of 5.9 resulted in 10 league assists, but last term, 4.5 xA only earned him one assist in the league.

For the method behind the numbers, there does need to be consideration for the difference in playing style between PSG and most teams. Luis Enrique has built the most fluid attacking unit in club football, with wingers doubling on one flank and players across the team given licence to roam as long as they are in a position to press well when possession is lost.

With that, the chances and assists Barcola creates rarely come from crosses. In fact, last season in Ligue 1, he completed just five crosses (0.3 per 90). By comparison, Bukayo Saka completed 40 at Arsenal (1.6 per 90) and Mo Salah completed 20 at Liverpool (0.45 per 90). The lack of crossing from Barcola may not be down to a lack of ability, as seen with his crossed assist for Doue against Norway at the World Cup, but may be an area that needs to be developed.

As for the assists Barcola has earned in recent seasons, there will be no surprise that his blistering pace plays a big role, alongside his willingness to take on his man.

For a blend of these two attributes, below are two examples of moments that are almost second nature: using his first touch to beat a man (which he does to create PSG’s first goal in a 4-2 comeback win over Manchester City) and then another run behind into space.

Both these assists were for Dembele, and these square passes across the box are often how the pair combine for goals.

Other players will elicit different combinations. For example, everybody will remember Senny Mayulu’s goal in the 2025 Champions League final for his amazing smile while celebrating, but the one-two between him and Barcola had led to an almost identical goal against Strasbourg earlier that season (both below).

All these examples are from the 2024-25 season, but if you have a moment to look at the four Champions League assists Barcola made last season, they all look very similar.

That understanding that makes football look simple may not be as eye-catching as the ball-rolls, nutmegs and dummies, but can sometimes be more effective.

Barcola is 24 in September and more efficiency is what clubs will hope he brings into next season.

There is no doubt over his talent, but does he need to be the man out wide as opposed to one of a group to show that on a more consistent basis than he did last year? He has already shown this summer at the World Cup he can force himself into a starting XI among the world’s best after starting the tournament on the bench.

Some will scoff at PSG’s valuation in excess of the £116m agreed for Anderson, but in the current market that feels fair. The real question is how far north does that valuation go?

Whoever does go for Barcola — if anyone — it will take a massive effort, but as shown above, it could be worth it.

A week ago, Cape Verde drew 0-0 with Saudi Arabia to seal an unlikely place in the World Cup’s knockout rounds, where they will play Argentina and Lionel Messi on Friday.

Ryan Mendes captained his country that day, winning his 100th cap in the process, another milestone for a player who was already Cape Verde’s record goalscorer.

It was another remarkable moment in this World Cup’s biggest underdog story, but the following day, events took a darker turn. It emerged, initially in reports from Brazilian newspaper Globo, that Mendes is facing allegations of rape.

The 36-year-old is being investigated over an alleged incident in New Zealand in March. Cape Verde were there to play in the FIFA Series, a mini-tournament designed to help them prepare for the World Cup. They played two games, against Chile and Finland. Mendes captained the team in both.

He has been accused of attacking a Brazilian woman who had been hired to work with the Cape Verde delegation as a translator during their time in Auckland.

After the New Zealand Herald revealed in May that an unnamed Cape Verde player was being investigated, local police confirmed to The Athletic that it was looking into the matter. After Mendes’ name was made public, the police in New Zealand confirmed to The Athletic that the probe remains ongoing.

Ryan Mendes trains with Cape Verde before their game with Argentina on Friday (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

Mendes has not been charged. The Cape Verde team did not respond to a request for comment, and neither did Mendes’ representative.

On Thursday, before their press conference for the Argentina match in Miami, Cape Verde’s press officer said that the coach, Pedro Leitao Brito, would not be answering questions about Mendes. When The Athletic attempted to ask him about the player, Brito did not answer, and the press officer reiterated that he would only be taking questions relating to the match. When another reporter attempted to ask about Mendes’ state of mind, he, too, was shut down.

At the time of writing, it’s unclear whether Mendes will face the world champions, although he trained as normal with his teammates on Thursday.

According to a statement issued by the woman’s Brazilian law firm to The Athletic, she was contracted by New Zealand Football, the game’s national governing body there and organiser of those March matches in Auckland.

The statement says she attended a “festive” event at the Cape Verdeans’ hotel alongside the players, including Mendes. After going back to her room, the statement says that Mendes knocked on her door and entered when she opened it.

The statement claims Mendes tried to kiss her and that, when she resisted, she was assaulted with “strangulation, punches and bites”. After that, it says she was raped.

The legal statement includes photos of the injuries, which the translator says she took. These images were included in the statement seen by The Athletic, and have been widely circulated on social media.

When her work was completed, the statement says that she returned home to her family. She says she reported the incident to local police, and attended an adult sexual assault clinic, where she was examined on April 1.

The document states that she tried to contact the contractors and organisers of the event, and the Cape Verdean Football Federation, but received “no real response”. It concludes by saying that she is still “traumatised”.

The Athletic has put the specific allegations in the legal statement to Mendes, via the Cape Verde Football Federation.

In a statement, New Zealand Football told The Athletic: “These are obviously very serious allegations and as such we understand this matter is under investigation with the New Zealand Police. Because of that, we are unable to comment on it at this stage but will be assisting police as and when required.”

The possible souring of this sporting fairytale is not the most troubling aspect of this story. The trauma allegedly suffered by the woman should be of far greater concern.

But this is a World Cup, Mendes is a footballer, and Cape Verde have been one of the stories of the tournament. It is inevitable that this story has clouded that narrative.

It is difficult to overstate how improbable Cape Verde’s journey to this tournament has been.

The country is a collection of 10 islands off the west coast of Africa, with a population of around 560,000. When they secured qualification for the tournament last October, they were briefly the second-smallest nation, by population, after Iceland, to ever reach the World Cup. Curacao, an island nation from the Caribbean, subsequently also secured a place to make Cape Verde the third-smallest country to achieve that.

At the time, their qualification was greeted with joyous scenes in the capital, Praia. This was not just the greatest achievement in the history of Cape Verdean football, but in Cape Verdean sport and even, in the view of some, the greatest thing to ever happen to Cape Verde full stop.

After being drawn in a group with European champions Spain, two-time World Cup winners Uruguay and Saudi Arabia, it was generally expected that they would depart the tournament at the earliest opportunity, although because of the expanded 48-team format allowing eight of the 12 third-placed sides to progress to the knockout phase, they did have a chance. If they were to beat Saudi Arabia in their final game, it was thought, that might be enough to go through.

But then they unexpectedly drew 0-0 with Spain in their opening match, with goalkeeper Vozinha becoming an international celebrity overnight thanks to his performance and clean sheet, and got another point from a 2-2 stalemate against Uruguay. After Spain beat Uruguay in those sides’ final game, another 0-0 with the Saudis was enough to take Cape Verde through, and in second place. They became the first team since Chile in 1998 to qualify for the World Cup’s knockout phase without winning a group match.

Cape Verde celebrate holding European champions Spain to a 0-0 draw (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

Mendes started and wore the captain’s armband in all three matches. He is widely regarded in Cape Verde as the country’s greatest ever player and is one of only two, Vozinha being the other, to appear in each of the five major tournaments they have reached: four editions of the Africa Cup of Nations, and now this World Cup.

Mendes was born on Sao Vicente, one of the archipelago’s smaller islands. He currently plays his club football for Igdir in Turkey’s second division, but has had a peripatetic career that has taken in spells in France, the United Arab Emirates and England, where he played for Nottingham Forest during the 2015-16 season in the second-tier Championship.

Despite being their captain and one of their most prominent players, Mendes had been absent from the team’s social media content in the days following that draw against Saudi Arabia. He didn’t appear in either of the two YouTube video diaries they posted from their base in Tampa, Florida, nor in a selection of training pictures.

However on Wednesday, two days before the Argentina game, the team’s X account posted a picture of the squad and support staff, with Mendes front and centre.

According to sources close to the Cape Verde camp, who wished to remain anonymous so they could speak freely, the players have not been affected by the publication of these allegations. As far as they are concerned, until charges are brought against Mendes, nothing has changed. They have prepared for today’s match as they normally would.

It would also appear that the allegations have not affected the mood among Cape Verde’s fans, at least not negatively.

Most appear to still be behind Mendes, with some questioning the timing of his name being made public. There is a feeling that, despite the seriousness of the allegations, they don’t want this to define their World Cup experience, to distract from the greatest sporting achievement in their nation’s history.

Before that press conference on Thursday, Cape Verde’s chosen method of dealing with this story was to not engage with it at all.

Their spokesperson did not respond to The Athletic’s request for comment, something that is consistent with how they dealt with other media outlets who have reported on the allegations. Their media-relations operation is not as comprehensive as many other countries at the tournament: the national football federation has few full-time staff and until this point, the only high-profile stories they have dealt with have been positive ones.

When initially contacted by the New Zealand Herald in May, FIFA did not engage with the matter. However, after Mendes was named, world football’s governing body, and organiser of the World Cup, provided a statement to The Athletic, which read: “FIFA takes any allegation of misconduct extremely seriously and has a clear process in place for anyone in football who wants to report an incident.

“As a general rule, please understand that the independent judicial bodies do not comment on allegations they may or may not have received, or whether or not investigations are underway into alleged cases. Any information they may like to share will be communicated at their discretion.

“FIFA is in contact with the New Zealand authorities. Please understand we cannot comment further at this stage.”

Additional reporting: Jack Lang, Thom Harris