The Truth About Lionel Messing with Drugs

Lionel Messi is a player who can do it all: create chances, score goals, dribble, foresee, etc. The current position he plays in Barcelona; requires a lot of pace and skill to not only create chances for his teammates on the counter but also create opportunities for himself to score. However, once Messi is past his prime, I presume his position will change to a creative role, since one of his most significant assets, his pace, will be on the decline. Then we can expect his ability to score goals to be on the decline but his leadership, ability to read the game, dictate each play in a game, all the traits that become better with experience. All the while ensuring Barcelona’s success because he is the embodiment of the club he understands its essence and identity. Messi is a natural born winner and has won everything there is to win in football at the club level. This man is relentless, I mean for God’s sake, he gave up chocolates and fizzy drinks just to get better focus during games.

For those of you lacking a Ph.D. in medical sciences, like myself; my people. GHD is a rare disorder categorized by the inadequate secretion of growth hormones from the anterior pituitary gland, a small gland located at the base of the brain. It results in growth obstruction, short height, and puberty delays. In Messi’s case, every night when he was just 8 years old with medical bills mounting to an estimate of 2,000 pounds. It is truly disgusting to discredit someone over a matter they had absolutely no control over. The treatment, the growth hormone therapy was an absolute must for Messi; to avoid a life of malnutrition and growth. Hence, it would be undignified to criticize his and his parent’s decisions in adopting such a therapy. However, this does not mean we can’t question how we view him.

In his career, Lionel Messi has scored 507 goals in 644 games. Calling him fairly talented would be a right on the mark or perhaps that talent was nowhere near the mark. Currently, the use of human growth hormones is banned mainly because of its side effects of increased immunity, better vision, skin and pituitary function development, followed by an increased height. While Messi had stopped using well before his adulthood; the question still remains: Should we idolize someone who owes his success to growth enhancement drugs? No matter how justified it had been?

Messi has gained many of his titles and triumphs either through skill, training or just sheer willpower. While we cannot and will not place any blame on him; we must at the very least acknowledge the fact that he had a running start and reached a peak, that was not earned through his skill or training but through the growth enhancement drugs. Some may say because he trained every day or played every day; he is where he is. Yeah, like the growth hormones he was injecting for 14 years had absolutely nothing to do with his scoring streaks, he might as well have been taking protein shakes, it would’ve had the same results!

You may think that the only conclusion we can draw is that both are factors to his success, his experience, skill, training, talent, and dedication, followed by the medication. But the simple fact of the matter is that not everyone in this sport has had such therapies. Therefore, it seems almost unfair to compare any player and especially young football enthusiasts to Messi. While we should acknowledge him for all his worth of dedication and love to the sport but at the same time evade ourselves from idolizing him and holding him like the mark to which football players should aspire and train hard for.

Messi will be entering his 32^nd birthday around June, and before we know it he’ll be entering his 42^nd birthday. Soon we shall start seeing him enter more leadership and management related roles and that would best for him. As at the end of the day he’s only human with a 14-year growth hormone therapy under his belt.