Reza Parastesh looks so much like his sporting hero Lionel Messi that it almost landed him in jail for disrupting public order in the western Iranian city of Hamedan this week.

So many people came out to take selfies with student Parastesh over the weekend that police rushed him into a station and impounded his car to stop the chaos and clear traffic.

The resemblance is so uncanny that Eurosport UK reportedly used his photo by accident on Twitter recently when talking about the real Messi.