Rosario, Monday: Stefano may be just a kid, but he feels like a champion when he dribbles and scores like his beloved Lionel Messi.
The boy is one of nine children who just enrolled at the brand new football school for kids with learning disabilities, created by the Argentine great’s childhood club Newell’s Old Boys.
“We’re a real football family. My husband played for the club, my other two sons did too and the oldest got to the fourth division,” said Stefano’s mother, Marisa Meroi.
“Stefano wanted to be like his brothers,” she said.
Now he gets to practice dribbling, passing and shooting like his football hero who was on the Newell’s books as a child.
“I like Messi, I like (Nacho) Scocco (a Newell’s striker). I play well. I love my family, I love my mom,” said Stefano, 10, who has Down’s syndrome, adding that the club is “my life.”
Stefano gets kitted out in the Newell’s colors and then joins the eight other children aged from 6 to 12 with similar learning disabilities at the Griffa Sports Center used by the first team.
Based in Rosario, some 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, Newell’s are not the only club to launch such an initiative but theirs is a weekly training session that is free for the participants.
Going to training is a highlight of the day for the children, but also for the parents who watch their young players’ progress from the sidelines. Agencies
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