Auction for Messi's napkin Barca deal halted for bizarre reason

An iconic event in soccer history was memorialized on a napkin when Barcelona informally recruited Lionel Messi, then 13 years old. He went on to orchestrate one of the best careers in sports history.

“In Barcelona, on 14 December 2000 and the presence of Messrs. [Josep] Minguella and Horacio [Gaggioli], Carles Rexach, FC Barcelona’s sporting director, hereby agrees, under his responsibility and regardless of any dissenting opinions, to sign the player Lionel Messi, provided that we keep to the amounts agreed upon,” is what the agreement said in Spanish.

News broke in February that Argentine agent Horacio Gaggioli would be selling the napkin in an online auction. Before signing him, Gaggioli brought Messi to the notice of Carles Rexach and another agent Josep Minguella. In turn, he set up a trial for the club a few months before that.

The team was hesitant to recruit Messi at first because of his small stature, youth, and non-European status, which hampered the discussions. Jorge Messi, the father of Lionel Messi, had become frustrated by the impasse.

At the club leaders’ lunch meeting, Rexach felt the tension building. Thus, he grabbed a paper napkin from the table dispenser and started to jot down some notes. For soccer, it would represent the start of something new at that time.

What is the issue regarding the Messi napkin?

From March 18 to the 27, the napkin is up for sale online by the prestigious British auction house Bonhams, with a starting bid of $379,000. However, the auction for the napkin that Lionel Messi supposedly allegedly signed for Barcelona has just been put on hold.

That’s because two individuals who were there at the time are now in a court battle about who exactly owns it. An argument between Horacio Gaggioli, Messi’s ex-agent, and veteran agent Josep Maria Minguella has halted the bidding.

What did Gaggioli say?

In his statement, Gaggioli stressed: “The napkin has always been mine and Minguella is not telling the truth about it. I have said in the media on several occasions that I am the owner of the napkin, and nobody has ever claimed otherwise. Neither Minguella nor anyone else.

“Minguella’s claims are contradictory and aren’t true. One day [in February this year], he said that the napkin was in a folder in his office, and he didn’t give it any further thought. The next (in April), he said that I [Gaggioli] had “kept the napkin after a match [at the Club de Tennis Pompeia] and taken it home.

“That means the napkin was never in his office in a folder. His versions of the story contradict one another. Minguella has never known where the napkin was because the napkin has never been his. He has always known that the napkin has been in my hands.”

Minguella is trying to capitalize on the issue for personal gain, according to Gaggioli. Meanwhile, he has dared him to validate his assertions before a public notary, but he has always declined.

“He has never claimed it [the napkin] off me since December 2000. Now he is simply trying to take advantage of the sale of the napkin being in the news to boost his image on radio and television at the expense of the truth. I responded to Minguella’s burofax on 18 March (this year) and Bonhams. We have demanded that he repeat his stories in front of a notary, and he hasn’t done so.”

PHOTOS: IMAGO