Lionel Messi's Rosario: school number 66, the club where he started playing at four, and a 69-metre mural above the Paraná River

Last Friday in Oviedo, Princess Leonor presented Lionel Messi with the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports at the Campoamor Theatre. The eight-time Ballon d'Or winner came with Antonela Roccuzzo, was greeted by bagpipes outside the Hotel de la Reconquista, and met with school students. But when he talks about himself, Messi always goes back to one place. "It's the place where I was born, where I spent beautiful moments in my childhood," he wrote for the Argentine daily La Nación.

Rosario, the city on the Paraná

Rosario is Argentina's third-largest city, with just over a million people, in the province of Santa Fe. A port and a university and cultural centre on the banks of the Paraná River. The city even has an official tourist route in Messi's footsteps that you can walk on your own.

It all begins in La Bajada, the neighbourhood where the Messi family lived until Leo turned 13 and left for Barcelona. He was born on June 24, 1987, at the Italiano Garibaldi hospital. Today he lives in the US and plays for Inter Miami, but it was La Bajada that built the footballer.

The school, the club and the grandmother

The first stop is primary school No. 66 "General Las Heras". Former classmates describe him as a quiet, shy kid who only came alive at break time when a ball appeared. A few blocks away is the Abanderado Grandoli club, where he started playing at four. The story is almost cinematic: his grandmother took him to matches, and when one player didn't turn up, she talked them into letting her grandson onto the pitch. The team won, and little Leo scored one of the goals.

Next comes the Malvinas Argentinas complex, home to Newell's Old Boys' children's football school, where Messi rose through the youth ranks. The club's stadium, the Marcelo Bielsa, is known to locals as the "Colossus of the Park". Central Córdoba, another Rosario club tied to his early days, is also on the route.

The museum and the murals

Just a few metres from the house where he grew up is the Santa Fe Sports Museum, on the former grounds of Battalion 121. As kids, Leo and his friends used to sneak onto the battalion's field to play ball. Today there's a section devoted to Messi - with the Ballon d'Or and Golden Boot he donated and a replica of the 2022 World Cup trophy.

The biggest symbol is on Avenida Libertad, near the National Flag Memorial by the Paraná: the mural "From another galaxy and from my city", 69 metres high and 14 metres wide. In La Bajada is its twin, "From another galaxy and from my neighbourhood", and another mural shows Leo as a child in Grandoli's red shirt. On the Olympic promenade there's a star with his name and a monument to the world champions.

The other great story began by the Paraná too. He met Antonela Roccuzzo as a child through his friend Lucas Scaglia, her cousin. The relationship survived the move to Barcelona, and they married on June 30, 2017, in Rosario, at the City Center hall, in front of family, childhood friends and plenty of footballers.

"If they ask me where I want to be, I'll always say Rosario," Messi says. In the Balkans this needs no translation: how many people left young, built a career somewhere else, and yet when you ask them, they still tell you about the street they grew up on? Rosario isn't just a tourist destination. It's proof that you never really leave your neighbourhood - you just carry it with you.