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As the next three and a half weeks slowly roll by as we await the quarterfinals of the Champions League a lot of good storylines are going to emerge. Like this one, for instance: aside from the 2015 UCL Final, Barcelona and Juventus don’t play often, in fact, the last competitive before the UCL Final was a match in the 2002/2003 Champions League campaign where Juve won 2-1. But in 2005 the two prestigious clubs met in a friendly match for the Joan Gamper trophy and guess who made the world take notice of his skill in that match? Lionel Messi.
The Barcelona website uploaded highlights from the match that showcased some vintage Messi moments shortly after his 18th birthday. La Pulga dribbles his way through Juve defenders and ends up getting fouled most the time as the Serie A side can’t find an answer to his quickness. He even supplies a superb assist on the way to a full time 2-2 score, which Barcelona eventually lost in penalties. A lot has changed since Leo’s first encounter with Juventus. La Pulga has scored over 400 goals and assisted on 140 more. He's won the Ballon d'Or four times along with 21 trophies for Barcelona. We won't even get into the egregious amount of records he holds. It's safe to say that then Juve manager Fabio Capello's assessment of Messi after the match was spot on:
“I saw him playing for the Argentina youth team, and he looked like a good player. But it’s something else to see him in this stadium, in that shirt and before so many people. I have never seen a player of such quality”.
