On October 16th, 2004, Messi made his professional debut with Barcelona against Espanyol in the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys. He entered in for Deco 82 minutes in while Barcelona was leading 1-0. In his previous season, he scored in 40 goals in 44 games between Juvenil B and Barcelona B, and he even played 2 friendlies with the 1st team. Another thing to note was his recent masterclass against Espanyol B which Rijkaard got noticed of, which with all the factors combined made him decide to sub him on in this game.
Only 2 minutes into the game, pressure from him caused David García to concede a throw-in. Later, Van Bronckhorst tried to cross him a ball but he was being marked and the ball went over his head. Afterwards came perhaps his best moment of the game, as Xavi passed him the ball from behind the halfwayline, held the ball, dribbled past David García, later got past Àlex and Ito (using Ito's body for a self-pass), and passed the ball to Iniesta.
From then, he didn't touch the ball until 6 minutes later. When he finally received another pass from Xavi, he completed another dribble, yet again against David García, then got rid of Àlex and left the ball for Iniesta. Half a minute later, he tried to dribble again but this time he wasn't able to. Larsson decided to pass him a good ball but it went too high for Messi and Kameni catched it. Finally, for the last play of the game he tried to dribble past Ito but wasn't able to, and that's where the game ended.
In total, he made 8 carries, 1 pass, 2/4 dribbles and 1 pressure, overall a good game from him, and he would play a couple more games in the season, even having his Champions League debut less than 2 months later.
That would be the beginning of not only Messi's prosperous career in Barcelona, but his professional career as a whole. And the rest, as they say, is history.
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