DHAKA: He looks like Lionel Messi, comes from the same country as the Argentine superstar and, at the age of eight, already has Barcelona’s interest piqued. 

At the risk of building up hype that few would be able to match, remember the name: Claudio Nancufil.

Nancufil, who comes from Bariloche in the southern Andes, is set to be hailed as the “future” of Argentine football, with the BBC ready to include him in a documentary as part of their pre-World Cup build-up, with Diego Maradona as the past and Messi as the present.

He belongs to the Martin Guemes club in the ski resort town he lives in and, according to the president Marcelo Ernalz, showed himself to be a special talent from the age of four.

“As soon as he started to play [aged four] he was already different from all the rest of his playmates with regards to technique,” Ernalz, who also coaches one of the age group teams at Martin Guemes, told Reuters: “How he takes the ball stuck to his foot, brakes, stops, kicks, scores, shoots on goal, from when he was little he had all these distinct qualities.”

Claudio is so small for his age that he is having hormone treatment (again, mirroring the early life of Messi). 

The Spanish newspaper El Confidencial reports that some large movers and shakers have already invested time in the player, including Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid.

 

Claudio's family can trace their origins to the Mapuche people of the southern Andean mountain range.

Nancufil’s family is understandably excited. His mother Viviana laughs at the fact that her youngest son can’t explain how he does what he does with a ball.

“We asked him, how do you do that? And he said, ‘I don’t know. I just get it in my head and my feet move on their own. It’s like that,’” she told Reuters.

“‘I don’t know how I play like that. My legs just go.’ That’s what he told us. We would kid him about it, we’d say that he ran by remote control.”

Source: independent.co.uk

BDST: 1710 HRS, JUL 15, 2014