Lionel Messi sends autographed jerseys to his little Afghan fan

The photograph of Murtaza Ahmadi, a football-mad five-year-old from Afghanistan, wearing a makeshift Argentina shirt with “Messi” scrawled on the back began trending on social media last month.

“I love Messi and my shirt says Messi loves me”, 5-year-old Murtaza said after putting on his brand new signed jersey, according to UNICEF’s Facebook page. Once Ahmadi’s identity was revealed, the Afghanistan Football Federation reached out to Messi to set up a meeting with his fan.

“Murtaza found a plastic bag and ran towards me asking me to make a jersey out of it for him”, Homayoun had said in January.

The boy’s father explained that Murtaza’s brother, Hamayon, had created the outfit for his younger sibling who wanted to wear the same shirt as Messi, but their family could not afford to buy the real thing. Messi is also a star on FC Barcelona in Spain.

The Iraq reference turned out to be false, and a Twitter user who wrote that the boy was from the city of Dohuk in northern Iraq later admitted that he had made that up.

The signed Argentina jersey and football were delivered to Murtaza in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province by the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF.

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A picture of the kid in his carrier bag was shared thousands of times online and football fans worked together to try and find him.

It’s not clear what’s happened to the plastic bag, which may now have been retired.

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