“Leo Messi played three games with the stone in his kidney,” Physician Francisco Ruiz Marcellan told Catalan television, according to Dermot Corrigan of ESPNFC. “He played with tranquilizers as he had not yet expelled it.”

The Barcelona forward was ruled out of his team’s Club World Cup semifinal win over Guangzhou Evergrande last December with renal colic, a type of abdominal pain commonly caused by kidney stones, but returned three days later for the final against River Plate. He scored the game’s opening goal 10 minutes before halftime to lead the Blaugrana to a 3-0 victory.

AD

AD

Following the Club World Cup, Messi tallied 12 goals in 11 games for Barca in all competitions before undergoing treatment last month. Ruiz Marcellan, the urology chief at the Instituto Dexeus, said the Argentine played through the pain barrier in three of those matches.

Messi underwent a procedure on Feb. 9 and sat out the next day’s Copa del Rey match against Valencia, but it didn’t take him long to bounce back. The 28-year-old scored a goal and assisted two others in a 6-1 romp over Celta Vigo at the Camp Nou on Feb. 14.

Catalan sports paper Mundo Deportivo reported that Messi’s treatment involved extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL), a non-invasive procedure that uses high-intensity waves.

AD

“It is a mechanical energy that generates the capacity to break up the stone,” Ruiz Marcellan said.

AD

It might not be the last time the reigning FIFA World player of the year faces this problem.

“With his genetic predisposition, it is very easy for him to have between two and eight stones in his kidney until he is 50 years old,” Ruiz Marcellan said.