When Fabregas Met Messi: Cesc Recalls How He Underestimated A "Very Small Kid" Called Lionel

Cesc Fabregas has admitted that he underestimated Lionel Messi in their first-ever training session together at Barcelona.

Fabregas and Messi played a lot of junior soccer together in Spain. They were in the same age group as their birthdays are just six weeks apart.

Messi arrived at Barca from Argentina aged 13 in 2000, while Fabregas had been at the club since he was 10.

Today, aged 35, Messi is just 1.69 meters tall. As a young teen, he was tiny compared to other players in his class and even received growth hormone injections.

When Fabregas first met Messi, his expectations were low.

That soon changed.

Speaking in a new BBC documentary, Fabregas recalls: "He was a very small kid, he didn't speak, he was very, very shy.

"The first training session we had with Leo I was playing a bit more of a defensive midfielder. We were doing this exercise of one against one. In my head, I'm thinking: 'I'm going to get the ball easy from him', because I like to go on the floor and I like to tackle.

"I saw that he was coming with speed that was not normal, he was coming very, very fast at me. I was already shocked because I was already on the floor and he scored the goal.

"From that moment I said: 'Hold on a second, we need to take this boy very, very seriously.'

"Before then, it wasn't that normal to see players at that age coming from so far. If you were very good, they could take you from somewhere in Spain, of course. Seeing someone come from somewhere so far away at such a young age we all thought: 'Wow, this boy must be something really special.'

"You need to be mentally really, really strong and to have a special character otherwise you don't succeed. There are so many moments where you feel weak, where your head misleads you a little bit and you want to go back to your family, you want to go back to your habits, you want to go back to your friends.

"I'm sure it was very tough but I want to believe we were good kids as well and we tried always to be next to him and help him as much as we could."

Fabregas left Barca aged 16 and spent the next eight years at Arsenal, where he eventually became club captain.

After playing 303 games for the Gunners, Fabregas re-signed for Barca in 2011 and had three seasons of senior soccer alongside Messi.

Cesc Fabregas (left) and Lionel Messi pictured playing together for Barcelona in 2012

IMAGO/Ulmer

During his first few months as an Arsenal player, Fabregas returned to Barcelona for a visit and watched Messi in a junior team game.

Fabregas remembers: "I went to Arsenal and three or four months later I had two days off so I went back and my dad told me: 'Listen, just here your ex-team are playing close to Barcelona and they're playing against Real Madrid.'

"So I said: 'Oh my god, I'd love to go and watch.' Leo was playing as a no.10 and I'd never seen anything like this. He was getting past players but with so much ease. They had to foul him so hard to stop him.

"I told my dad and I said: 'Oh my god, Leo.' He looked so much stronger as well, it's like he had made that change physically that nobody could stop him. That was the first day I said: 'I don't think I've seen anyone like this at this age.'"

More than 20 years on from their first meeting, Messi and Fabregas are close friends and they frequently spend family holidays together.