Lionel Messi celebrates scoring against Arsenal during the Champions League quarter-final

Cesc Fabregas, for example, is certainly made of the right stuff. No second opinion required. That is the good news. The bad news for Arsenal fans as Barcelona are rumoured to be considering a £50 million bid in the summer is that Messi diagnoses a severe case of blue and scarlet blood. “Cesc has a place for Arsenal in his heart, but he has Barcelona in his blood,” is his verdict. “He will want to win the biggest prizes in football, and I expect him to do that at Barcelona. “I don’t exactly know when that will be, but I expect him to be my Barcelona team-mate again at some point. “I am sure that Arsene Wenger and Cesc have a father-son relationship and I know that he has a very special relationship with the Arsenal fans.

“When you grow up at a club, it is more than just a club. The coaches, the players, the people in the club will be like family. “But Barcelona is his city and it is the club of him and his family. There are only a few players in the world who can improve this squad we have but Cesc is one of them.” Fabregas was 15 when he left the Nou Camp in 2003 but he was only allowed to go in the first place because his route to the first team was baulked by Xavi and Andres Iniesta – although even then he stood out, according to Messi, by not trying to. “Nobody would really know how to play against him,” he said. “We played together and at that age you want to stay on the ball and do something special.

“But Cesc would just calmly look up and see a pass that nobody else on the field could see. It would completely split the defence. You have to work hard in training to be the best, but to see what Cesc sees on a football pitch – you are born with it. “You can try to learn as much as you want, but you will never be taught how to see a pass the way he can.” The prospect of the pair of them being thrown together again in the future sends a shudder down the spine of European football. Just how much better can Barcelona – the team who have shrugged off Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea in the last 12 months – get? “We have proved just how strong the squad is,” said Messi, 22. “Last year was amazing for the players, the coach, the fans, and everybody involved with the club.

“When you win everything, though, the only thing that can match it is winning everything again. That is the aim of this football club. “I have already said this team can go down in the history books. What we did last year was special, but to go down as the best ever we need to keep doing it and I believe we can. “I don’t believe we will be remembered for just what we won, but how we won it. I hope people enjoy watching us and I hope people in 50 years will talk about how this football team played the game. “This Barcelona team have a chance to go down in not just recent history, but in football history.” Trophies, trophies, trophies, Same old, same old, same old. But isn’t the Premier League supposed to be the place to play?

Messi, though, has a special reason to stay just where he is, one that marks him out far too easily from many of his peers in the money-obsessed game of 2010. The reason is loyalty. Until rescued by Barcelona, he came within inches – quite literally – of being thrown on the football scrapheap as a young boy in Argentina. A dozen inches, to be precise. Now 5ft 7in in his socks, doctors in his home country predicted his hormone condition would never allowed him to stretch beyond 4ft 7in – far too small to be able to express himself in the professional game. Even as a 10-year-old in Newell’s Old Boys junior side in his home town of Rosario, Messi looked at least two years younger than every one of his team-mates.

His father, Jorge, was able to cover two years’ of growth hormone replacement treatment under the terms of his health insurance, but the policy refused to stump up after that. The £500-a-month bill was also beyond his club and it seemed Messi’s career could have been over before it really started. That is where Barcelona came in. Time as well as money was spent over the next four years until he was considered ready to break into the first team. So it is no surprise that this shy but warm and curiously likeable young man now has such a tight bond with his surrogate parents. “I will always be grateful to Frank Rijkaard because he gave me a chance in the first team when I was just 17,” said Messi. “At that point I know there were a lot of people telling him that I was never going to be big enough. If he was proved wrong there would have have been a lot of people telling him he was wrong, so it’s a big thank-you to him for giving me the chance he did.