The napkin on which Lionel Messi’s first agreement with Barcelona was informally written will be sold at auction.
Bonhams, a private international auction house based in London, will conduct the auction between March 18 and 27, with a starting price of £300,000 ($381k), on behalf of Argentine player agent Horacio Gaggioli.
The agreement was reached on December 14, 2000, when Barcelona manager Carles Rexach was desperate for the club to sign the then 13-year-old Messi.
Messi had impressed during his two-week trial with Barcelona in September 2000, but the club was initially reluctant to sign such a young, non-European player.
Rexach was worried that the Catalan club would miss out on signing Messi, who had returned to his hometown of Rosario in Argentina.
Gaggioli said The Athletic Last year, he had informed Rexach in December 2000 that if they could not commit to signing Messi, the teenager would be offered to other clubs, including Real Madrid.
Rexach invited Gaggioli to dinner in Barcelona to make a final decision on Messi, but there was a problem: Rexach did not have time to draft or print a contract, but instead needed the relevant signatures on a document that would then be legally binding.
His solution was to take a napkin and write down the contractual words that would then be signed by the interested parties, to signal a legal commitment.
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The napkin said: “In Barcelona, on December 14, 2000, and in the presence of Mr. (the agent, Josep Maria) Minguella and Horacio (Gaggioli), Carles Rexach, technical secretary of the FCB, undertakes under his responsibility, “Despite the opinion of others who are against signing Lionel Messi, as long as the agreed fees are maintained.”
Rexach signed the napkin alongside football agents Minguella, who had worked on multiple Barça deals in the past, including Diego Maradona, and Gaggioli.
“This is one of the most exciting items I have ever touched,” said Ian Ehling, director of fine books and manuscripts at Bonhams New York. “Yes, it’s a paper napkin, but it’s the famous napkin that was at the beginning of Lionel Messi’s career.
“He changed the life of Messi, the future of FC Barcelona, and was instrumental in delivering some of football’s most glorious moments to billions of fans around the world.”
Messi made his Barcelona debut in 2004 and scored 672 goals for the club in 778 appearances before leaving in 2021 (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)
Commenting on the event years later, Gaggioli called it a “wonderful moment.”
“That napkin broke the deadlock,” he added.
“My lawyers examined it. The napkin had everything: my name, his name, the date. He is notarized. It was a legal document.
“It will be a part of me for the rest of my life. The napkin will always be by my side. “I live in Andorra and I have kept the napkin in a safe inside a bank.”
On Wednesday, Minguella told Catalunya Radio that the napkin had been in his office for years and that he had offered Barcelona the possibility of displaying it in the club’s museum.
He claims that he did not receive a response from Barcelona and that he will now ask the lawyers to find out who is the legal owner of the napkin and how someone can prove that they are legally the owner of it to put it up for sale.
Minguella has insisted that he does not want to profit from the napkin, but that he would prefer to see it in the Barcelona museum or, if it is sold, for the money to go to the club’s foundation.
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(Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
