Dreams of a five-year-old Afghan boy came true when he received an Argentina jersey and a football signed by his hero Lionel...
Dreams of a five-year-old Afghan boy came true when he received an Argentina jersey and a football signed by his hero Lionel Messi on Thursday after his pictures wearing a plastic bag Messi shirt went viral on social media in January.
The signed Argentina jersey and football were delivered to Murtaza in Afghanistan's Ghazni province by the UN children’s agency, UNICEF.
“I love Messi and my shirt says Messi loves me,” UNICEF quoted Murtaza as saying.
“A woman from UNICEF got in contact with us and told us a couple of days ago that Murtaza might be receiving a package from Messi,” Murtaza’s father Mohammad Arif Ahmadi told Al Jazeera English.
“He is very happy to receive the gifts.”
Murtaza had expressed his desire to meet his football hero and Afghan Football Federation among other organizations had promised to fulfill his dream at a appropriate time.
“I love Messi and football. I will meet him one day,” he quoted as saying by the media.
The improvised Messi shirt that made Murtaza famous was made by his 15-year-old brother Homayoun. The plastic bag shirt perfectly fitted the little boy as his elder boy wrote Messi’s name and his No 10 with a ball-point pen on it.
“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.
“We can’t even imagine buying the original Messi jersey. We just can’t afford it so, to make my brother happy, I made a shirt out of that plastic bag for him.”