File image of a framed copy of the serviette linking the 13-year-old Lionel Messi to FC Barcelona. The serviette can be auctioned in London
| Photo Credit: AP
Lionel Messi‘s record-breaking profession with Barcelona began with a contract written on a serviette. It’s up for auction with a beginning worth of 300,000 kilos ($379,000).
British auction home Bonhams is promoting the serviette in a web-based auction from March 18-27 on behalf of Horacio Gaggioli, an agent from Messi’s dwelling nation of Argentina who was a part of the deal.
The serviette, bearing the date December 14, 2000, bears the signatures of Gaggioli, one other agent, Josep Maria Minguella and Barcelona’s then-sporting director, Carles Rexach, who met at a tennis membership in Barcelona.
It outlines an settlement in precept to signal Messi and was meant to reassure his father, Jorge Messi, that the deal would undergo. A extra formal and detailed contract with the membership adopted quickly after.
“This is one of the most thrilling items I have ever handled. Yes, it’s a paper napkin, but it’s the famous napkin that was at the inception of Lionel Messi’s career,” Ian Ehling, the head of fine books and manuscripts at Bonhams New York, said in a statement.
“It changed the life of Messi, the future of FC Barcelona, and was instrumental in giving some of the most glorious moments of football to billions of fans around the globe.”
