From Grandoli to the World Cup: The neighborhood club where Messi's journey started

ROSARIO, Argentina (AP) — The breeze off the Paraná River brings a chill to the afternoon in Rosario. As the kids warm up, the clatter of their tiny cleats intensifies until the referee signals for the players to enter the pitch.

They’re wearing the orange and white-striped jersey of Abanderado Grandoli, the neighborhood club where Lionel Messi’s soccer journey started 34 years ago. From a nearby building, a mural of a young Messi watches over the children as they chase the ball.

Just maybe, years from now, one of them will be compared to Rosario’s most famous son, arguably the best soccer player of all time.

“I watched him when I was little and it made me want to play like him,” said Julián Silvera, an 11-year-old who particularly admires Messi's free kicks.

The final chapter of Messi’s glorious soccer career has yet to be written – in a few weeks, the 38-year-old Inter Miami captain is expected to play in his sixth World Cup for Argentina, though he hasn’t officially confirmed it. That story began here, in a lower-middle-class district of Rosario, Argentina’s third-largest city and an industrial hub that was also the birth place of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

It was in 1992 when his maternal grandmother, Celia, took 5-year-old Lionel to watch his older brother, Matías, play for Grandoli in one of Rosario’s youth leagues.

How Messi ended up on the pitch has become part of the club’s lore: One player was missing for a seven-a-side match for 6-year-olds, and Celia saw an opportunity for her tiny but gifted grandson. She argued with the coach, Salvador Aparicio, to put him on.

“Aparicio didn’t want him to because he was too young for the age group,” Ezequiel Assales, who was Messi’s teammate at Grandoli in those early years, told The Associated Press. “The grandmother insisted. They put him on, and everyone said, ‘What a player!’ That’s how it all started.”

According to Spanish journalist Guillem Balagué, author of the only authorized biography of Messi, the coach thought the game would be too rough for the little boy, who already was showing signs of the growth impediment for which he would later seek treatment. He decided to put Messi on the right wing, where he could be close to his grandmother.

“If you see him cry or get scared, take him out,” Aparicio told the woman, according to Balagué’s account.

Aparicio, who died in 2008, described in several interviews how Messi failed to control the ball the first time it came his way. But the next play, he received it with his left foot and dribbled past a series of opponents. A legend was born.

In Argentina, so-called “baby fútbol” clubs serve as training grounds for kids between the ages of 4 and 13.

Unlike youth teams for teenagers, they don’t receive a cut of the transfer fees when players change clubs later in their careers. Those so-called solidarity payments are an important source of income for clubs around the world that developed talented players before they turned professional.

Instead, they depend on monthly fees paid by families and ticket sales on match days. In Grandoli’s case, the club has been able to leverage Messi's fame to generate additional income from advertising for energy drink and beer brands.

In the club’s small locker room, a display case with trophies and photographs of Messi’s youth team chronicles the left-footed maestro’s time at the club and serves as inspiration for the hundred or so children who train there.

“He was a different kind of player; you just had to give him the ball and support him. You could already see he had a future,” recalled Assales, who now has two sons playing for the club. “He’d leave three or four players in his wake. We’d wait for the rebound, or he’d finish the goal.”

As the goals added up, growing numbers of spectators came to the pitch on weekends to watch the “new Maradona,” born a year after Argentine soccer icon Diego Maradona lifted the World Cup trophy in 1986.

“What everyone else got to see as an adult, we were lucky enough to see from the very beginning. He was fantastic,” said David Treves, one of Grandoli’s coaches and its president for 17 years until 2023.

“He had incredible speed and ball control. Back then, the pitch was nothing special, just dirt. His technical skills made his physical limitations invisible,” Treves said.

At 7, Messi moved to Newell’s Old Boys, one of the most popular clubs in Rosario. When the club declined to finance treatment for his growth hormone deficiency, which was threatening his career, the Messi family moved to Spain where soccer giant Barcelona welcomed the 13-year-old prodigy to its academy and offered to pay his medical bills.

During his trophy-laden career with Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain and now Inter Miami, Messi has never returned to Grandoli. But some of his gestures hark back to his beginnings there.

Messi points to the sky with his index finger during goal celebrations as a tribute to his grandmother, who died in 1998 and whom he gives credit for pushing him to start playing soccer.

After winning the World Cup with Argentina in Qatar in 2022, Messi posted a heartfelt message on social media: “From Grandoli to the Qatar World Cup, almost 30 years have passed. Nearly three decades in which the ball has given me many joys and also some sorrows. I always dreamed of being a World Champion and I didn’t want to stop trying.”

The message was not lost on his childhood club. The phrase “From Grandoli to the Qatar World Cup,” is written on the jerseys of the kids playing soccer on a brisk afternoon in May.

The referee blows the final whistle. The children rush off the field toward the club’s snack bar, drawn by the smell of french fries and chicken cutlet sandwiches.

With the World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada fast approaching, the Grandoli youth players — like the rest of Argentina — are counting on Messi to be there, leading the defending world champions one last time.

“There will never be anyone like him,” said 11-year-old Valentín Enríquez. “I feel sad because the best player on the national team is leaving.”

AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

Children of the LT3 soccer club warm up before playing a match against the Grandoli club, where world soccer star Lionel Messi played as a child in Rosario, Argentina, Saturday, May 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Workers from the Grandoli football club carry a goalpost to the pitch for children's soccer matches in Rosario, Argentina, Saturday, May 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Worker Jorge Sosa holds a flag, kept in a locker room at the Grandoli club, features soccer star Lionel Messi to be hung next to the pitch before the start of children's matches in Rosario, Argentina, Saturday, May 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

A mural of soccer star Lionel Messi covers the wall of a building as children play a match at the Grandoli club, where Messi played as a child in Rosario, Argentina, Saturday, May 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Children of the LT3 soccer club warm up before playing a match against the Grandoli club, where world soccer star Lionel Messi played as a child in Rosario, Argentina, Saturday, May 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Children from the Grandoli club, where soccer star Lionel Messi played as a child, listen to their coach before the start of a game in Rosario, Argentina, Saturday, May 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Workers from the Grandoli football club carry a goalpost to the pitch for children's soccer matches in Rosario, Argentina, Saturday, May 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s employers delivered a surprising 115,000 new jobs last month despite an economic shock from the Iran war.

Hiring beat the 65,000 jobs forecasters had expected, though it decelerated from the 185,000 jobs created in March. The unemployment rate remained at a low 4.3%, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The Iran war has caused the biggest disruption of global oil supplies in history and sent average U.S. gasoline prices surging past $4.50 a gallon this week. But the conflict hasn’t done much damage to the American job market so far. And the import taxes — tariffs — that President Donald Trump imposed last year haven't turned out to be as high and as damaging as originally feared.

“The labor market is not booming, but it is proving harder to break than many feared,’’ said Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economics at Fitch Ratings.

Healthcare added 37,000 jobs last month and transportation and warehousing companies 30,000. However, manufacturers cut 2,000 jobs in April and have shed 66,000 jobs over the past year despite Trump’s protectionist policies aimed at creating factory jobs.

“Businesses to some extent are viewing the conflict in Iran as temporary,'' said Gus Faucher, chief economist at the financial firm PNC. ”We continue to see solid growth in consumer spending. And we’re seeing strong business investment, particularly around tech and AI. The economy continues to expand. We’ve weathered some shocks. The worst of the tariff impact is likely over.''

Still, Faucher cautioned that "the longer conflict in Iran lasts, the higher energy prices go, the longer they stay elevated the greater the drag on the economy.''

Labor Department revisions shaved 16,000 jobs from February and March payrolls.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.2% from March and 3.6% from April 2025, consistent with the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target.

The number of people in the U.S. labor force dropped last month, and the share of those working or looking for work — the so-called labor force participation rate — dropped to 61.8%, lowest since October 2021.

Baby Boomer retirements and Trump’s immigration crackdown mean that fewer people are competing for work and that the economy doesn’t need to generate as many jobs as it used to.

Matthew Martin of Oxford Economics says the so-called break-even point — the number of new jobs required each month to keep the unemployment rate from rising — is now near zero.

After the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks Feb. 28, Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes. The disruption has caused a painful increase in the price of energy and led many economists to downgrade their estimates for global and U.S. economic growth.

Payroll processor ADP reported Wednesday that private employers added a solid 109,000 jobs in April. The ADP figure isn't a reliable guide to what the Labor Department will report Friday – but the pace of hiring it showed was the fastest since January 2025. And on Tuesday the Labor Department reported that a measure of gross hiring – before subtracting those who left or lost their jobs – was stronger in March than it had been in more than two years.

The economy is getting a boost from big tax refund checks this spring, arising from Trump’s tax cut legislation last year; the refunds allow consumers to spend more freely, giving companies an incentive to add workers in response to rising sales.

The job market is showing intermittent signs of recovery after a bleak 2025. Employers last year created just 9,700 jobs a month, fewest outside a recession year since 2002. High interest rates and uncertainty over Trump’s economic policies held back hiring.

There's been progress this year, but it's been uneven — strong growth (160,000 new jobs) in January, March (185,000) and April's 115,000 and one bad month (employers cut 156,000 jobs in February).

U.S. hiring, though, has been dominated by one industry: Healthcare companies, catering to an aging American population, have added 456,000 jobs over the past year; other employers have combined to cut 205,000 over the 12 months that ended in April.

Still, Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that last month's job gains extended beyond healthcare. Retailers, for example, added 22,000 jobs and construction companies 9,000.

“America’s hiring recession appears to be over,'' she wrote. "Average job gains in 2025 were an anemic 10,000 a month. So far in 2026, the average is 76,000. The bad news is inflation is eating up wage gains again. Wages grew at 3.6%. That certainly won’t be enough at a time when inflation is expected to hit 4%. Americans still have jobs, but they are financially squeezed by surging gas prices and transportation costs.”

The jobs data will likely keep the Fed on the sidelines, as it holds its key rate unchanged while evaluating the economic impact of the Iran war. Fed officials are increasingly focused on inflation, which has risen quickly since the war, driven higher by spikes in gasoline prices.

Inflation jumped to 3.3% in March, a two-year high and far above the Fed’s target. The Fed typically keeps its rate unchanged -- or even raises it -- to combat inflation, while it cuts rates to spur more growth and hiring. Early this year many Fed policymakers were worried the job market was stalling and leaned toward rate cuts. But in more recent months hiring has stabilized, undermining the case for cuts.

The strong hiring data lands as U.S. corporations post solid quarterly performances to start the year.

Friday's jobs report, PNC's Faucher said, “actually makes it less likely that we see a rate cut anytime soon because the Fed can say: ‘The job market is solid. Let’s get inflation back down to 2%. This is not the time to cut rates.’ ’’

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this story.

FILE - Hiring sign for sales professionals is displayed at a store, in Vernon Hills, Ill., Wednesday, April 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, file)

FILE - The per-gallon price is displayed elecronically over the grades of gasoline available at a Buc-ee's convenience stop Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Johnstown, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, file)

FILE - A job seeker waits to talk to a recruiter at a job fair Aug. 28, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier, File)