Afghan boy with plastic bag Messi jersey finally has the real thing
"I love Messi and my shirt says Messi loves me."
That was the message of joy from a young Afghan boy whose dream of wearing his favorite soccer player's jersey is finally a reality.
Murtaza Ahmadi first grabbed international attention when a photo of him wearing a blue and white plastic bag with Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi's name and number drawn crudely on the back went viral.
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But no one could figure out who he was or how to locate him.
Thousands of people shared the photo and tried to find the boy in order to get him a real jersey. After some speculation that he was an Iraqi refugee, he was later identified by family members as 5-year-old Murtaza, who lives in the countryside of Jaghori, Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan Football Federation soon got involved, and arranged for Murtaza to visit with the country's national team.
"The country’s football federation considers it as its obligation to work for fulfilling and realizing the little Murtaza’s wishes," the organization wrote in a recent blog post.
But the moment the world had been waiting for came when Murtaza's story made its way to the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), which arranged to have a signed Messi jersey delivered to him.
On Thursday, UNICEF tweeted a photo showing Murtaza decked out in his brand-new Messi jersey, complete with an autograph from the man himself.
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"Murtaza realized one of his biggest dreams today! He received team jerseys and an autographed football with a personal message from UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Leo Messi," UNICEF Afghanistan wrote in a post on its Facebook page. "The right to play and practice sports promotes the well-being of all children, especially the most vulnerable trapped in emergencies around the world."
The Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) said in a blog post that it plans to arrange a meeting between Ahmadi and Messi.
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Megan Specia was Mashable's Assistant Real-Time News Editor and joined the team in September 2014. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism & Mass Communications from the University of New Hampshire after growing up in the Jersey 'burbs. She made her way to New York via a four year stopover in Dublin. Megan previously worked as a journalist and editor at Storyful in both Dublin and New York. Before all of that, though, her claim to fame was as head cake arranger and purveyor of all things sweet at Queen of Tarts cafe in Dublin, where she developed a serious addiction to macarons.
