The day i met Lionel Messi...

Run. It was all I could do. What were my other options? Stay and I was next. I'd still to be rumbled. But I wasn't hanging about. Go now.
I leapt at the staircase and scrambled down, legs and arms flailing as I cleared up to three steps at a time. Bang! - the soles of my feet smashed flush with the concrete base of each flight, the palm of my pivoting hand squeaking on the plastic of the banister as I manically spiralled my way down five floors of Emergency Exit.
What caused that desperate yelp? The panicked screams of "Sorry! Sorry! I am so sorry!". What was happening to the boy on the other side of those doors?
He'd have been pounced upon the moment he'd rushed through. He will have been grabbed instantly - maybe even floored - by as many as four of them. Every one of them I'd seen was a man mountain. A battle-ready Spanish Armada stood primed on the opposite side of those doors. He'd gone in armed - it was suicide.
If the boy was lucky, he'd have been pushed face-first into the wall, his left arm twisted up his spine, and dragged out to the front stairs, his pain matched only by his humiliation to those gathered below.
If his luck was out, he was in for a world of trouble. Broken bones, a dislocated jaw? Sizing up these guys, knocking someone's teeth out looked almost routine.
How had it come to this? Lionel Messi we'd known for years was untouchable on the pitch. Tonight I'd learned that rule applied off it, too!

It was an unremarkably normal, typical day in the West of Scotland. It was the start of November and it was cold; it was wet; it was dark. It was also just after half-past ten in the morning. In summary, the day would be best described as 'pish' - "It was a pish November's day".
But for me, my recently retired dad, and my good friend P. Mullan (Paul), we were all absolutely buzzing. For today, we were meeting our heroes. The heroes of every football supporter who ever lived. Unrivalled, THE best team to have ever played the beautiful game. None other than FC Barcelona, messrs Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Villa, Puyol, Pique, all included.
My dad and I were old pros at this game. For years - albeit not once in the previous four - we'd trailed team buses from airports to hotels in the sticks surrounding Glasgow and Paisley; snaked through passport control in search of autographs; the lot. We include FCB on two previous occasions as past conquests, along with Man Utd, AC Milan and Real Madrid (Champions League Final, 2002).
But this one. Well, this was the biggest of the lot. So we had a strategy.
The team, I'd been reliably informed by the ever helpful @barcastuff on Twitter, were coming in on Tuesday morning for the game on the Wednesday. My dad, back home and glued to TV and the internet, was our version of how Hollywood imagines entry level CIA spies: he was the guy in the back of the surveillance van disguised as a telephone line repair truck. Me and Paul? Well we were the top dogs, the super spies with bigger fish to fry. Actually, we weren't. We were both at work. So my dad had been landed with the job of keeping tabs on FCB's every movement. And, performing admirably, his first call came in as I sat outside Hamilton Sheriff Court on that "pish" November morning.
With the news they'd touched down reaching him minutes earlier, he was already heading eastbound on the M8 motorway in the slipstream of the team bus. "They're heading towards Glasgow," he told me over the phone, "so it must be the Hilton or the Radisson". That ruled out the two plush country estates the other side of town, Mar Hall and Cameron House.
The game was on.

Cue step one: check into the same hotel. Onto my iPhone I went to book both for the night, triple checking the 'Full refund if cancelled within one hour of check-in' policy. I was hoping for the £100 Hilton: £150 in the Radisson was really on the edge of our limit. Justifying it to Paul on the phone, we both agreed we'd pay way over the split cost of £75 each to meet the squad if such an opportunity presented itself. Fair do's then when our agent in the field came back on the phone to let us know that the Radisson it was.
After six hours glued to the office clock, finally my day was over and the real fun could begin. I'd taken the following day off work, giving us the utmost opportunity of cementing our imminent friendships with the Catalan superstars. As the obsessive hordes gathered unfruitfully in the cold and wet of the Glasgow night, we'd be living both the life of luxury, and the dream - shaking hands, bagging photos and autographs, and presumably just generally hanging about with the Barca squad.
I headed straight from work to the hotel, where Paul met me a short time later. Our room was up on the fifth floor.
The team were out at Celtic Park, sampling the turf for the following night's UEFA Champions League group match. Despite that, it was clearly obvious looking out from the glass lift as we were hoisted up to our level that the fourth floor was all theirs. It was swarming with the type of suited, sturdy security personnel you'd more often associate with a foreign dignitary than a football team. This wasn't how East Fife travelled, that was for sure.
We dropped the bags off in the room and - with shirts and marker pens in hand - ventured back down to the lobby bar. We'd wait, watching out through the Radisson's glass facade, and as soon as the bus arrived stand patiently for the squad as they signed what they could outside before walking straight into meet us.

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Here we are here (Paul and I) blending in with the suits and businessmen and women alike in the Radisson, awaiting Barca's arrival back from training. The excitement - as made obvious by this photo - was palpable. We. Were. Psyched!
"There it is, there it is, there it is," I deliriously droned, stepping up from my seat by the window as the bus' lights came into view beside the hotel. I led the march to our prime position directly adjacent to the hotel's revolving main door. The waiting was about to be over.
The bus crept up to the door of the hotel...but then for some mysterious reason failed to stop. It was turning at the end of the street, too. Wait a minute, what is happening here? We'd saw the players signing autographs and the likes on the TV as we'd waited in the bar, STV news showing footage of the Spanish champions earlier arrival. Why wasn't that happening now?
We hastily ran outside the door of the hotel and the 50 or so feet towards the street to its left, following the route of the bus. But we were too late. The coach had pulled up directly outside a staff entrance at the side of the Radisson about another 100 yards down the road, roped off with soggy velvet lines on either side and manned by no less than three guards both left and right.
The bastards! They'd got us. Dejected, and after a further hour or so waiting back in the lobby without a single sight of even an unknown quartet of 'B' players, we retired for the night. Beaten we had been, but deterred we were not.
The next morning we were up early and back to the lobby. By close to mid-day there was still no sign of any players. We must have been sitting there for four hours already. Paul, like anyone right-minded, called it quits. I was left alone.
A number of backroom staff began to appear as the hours ticked by, with the likes of Sandro Rosell, his Celts equivalent Peter Lawell, Lubo Moravcik and Andoni Zubizarreta popping up every so often.
Bored, more than anything, I got chatting to hotel staff as I patiently waited - my one night reservation in the hotel having already caused me to be ousted from what was my room. I  enquired what the situation had been last night, if the players had just came in and went to bed or if they'd liaised somewhere else in the building. I was told they'd headed back to their rooms then came back down for dinner.
But I knew I'd waited in the lobby that night - there'd been no sign of anyone coming or going. The only two lifts were glass-walled, and both came to the lobby. I wouldn't have missed them.
Beaten we had been. Deterred I now was. I headed home. What a waste of money and, more importantly, a day of holiday from work. Even if I hung about for them leaving for Parkhead, it would have been roped off once more. It was pointless.

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That night I sat in amazement as Cetic pulled off the greatest result in their modern history, beating Barca 2-1. I'd stopped thinking about trying to meet the squad, and had resigned myself to defeat.
However, come the end of the match, I couldn't resist the temptation to try once more. This could be my last chance, I thought. And then came my Eureka moment. I had an in.

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I rocked back up to the hotel for close to 10 o'clock and joined the 40 or so fans waiting at the side door. The door I'd earlier considered a secret was now obviously public knowledge. I knew waiting there we had no chance of bagging anything, especially after FCB had lost. But that didn't worry me - I had an ace up my sleeve.
Presuming it would be close to another half-an-hour before the Blaugrana returned, I got to work on my plan.
Having retained my key-card for room 5/11, a quick flash of that to the two doormen meant I could breeze back into the hotel lobby and to the foot of the lifts. I pressed for the fifth floor, waited patiently, then ascended up, observing even more of Barca's official security entourage than the previous night guarding the entire floor.
Attempting to look completely undaunted, I reached the fifth level and walked from the lift down the corridor, taking a left-hand turn at the end, past my room from the night before and to exactly what I predicted awaited towards the foot of the corridor: the Emergency Exit and service elevator.
Pushing through the double wooden doors from the hallway, first came the two metallic lifts, then through a second pair of doors past them was the staircase.
What had occurred to me was that Barca must have been using this lift to go up and down floors, away from the public eye and beside that "secret" side entrance.
My plan? Use the fifth floor emergency staircase to go down to the fourth floor, which I did. Wait behind the double doors within the staircase for the service lift to come up and, when it did, walk through the doors to the arriving Barca players, completely out of sight of the security who stood literally on the otherside of the double doors adjacent to those at the staircase.

This photo is the scene I'm trying to have you picture. So from where I've taken the photo, that's the two lifts on the left and the wooden double doors on the right lead through to the fourth floor hallway and the players' rooms, plus tons of security. Behind me is another pair of double doors, which by going through you reach the emergency exit stairwell. My initial plan had been to try and get the players outside leaving the bus then come back here. But this spot was too good, so I'd wait it out here. I would get every player all to myself, my Barca ball hand-signed by each of them (the shirt had been ditched).
Fifteen minutes of waiting gone though and that all changed. The door above me, the door for the fifth floor, creaked open. Bricking it, I didn't have any answers for what I was about to be caught doing. So I just stayed entirely still. Then footsteps started coming down.
I couldn't believe it. No, I hadn't been busted - I'd been copied! Some other chancer had stolen my idea!
He was English, a serial autograph hunter and an absolute nutcase to boot. The guy was genuinely clueless, which made me even more astounded that he'd managed to mirror my genius ploy.
"Good idea with the service lift," he said, with a smile that screamed 'Let's be best friends forever!'
'Go away,' I just kept saying to him in my head, as I constantly hushed his big booming brute voice as I tried to keep us hidden.
We waited - me becoming more and more frustrated by the second by this moron who'd somehow now become my accomplice - for about 45 minutes. Then it all started coming together perfectly.
Waiting in the stairwell, we heard the lift's gears move. Poking our heads through the door, we watched as it rose from floor one to floor four, keeping ourselves concealed as backroom staff and hangers-on came up in the first few rounds of lifts.
Then, our first success. Both lifts stationary on the fourth floor, the left one is called down to level one. It then starts rising and reaches level four. The doors open and there's defender Mark Bartra, with a host of other young players neither me nor the English guy know. Still, as bemused as they look to see us come through the door all guns a-blazing, they allow the goon to take some photos, with me using his camera to snap him and the group, and then him using the same digital camera to snap me. The players are pleasant and good to us. I chose not to get my ball signed. Knowing how well this is going, I've decided I'll save it for the big names. I'll also just use the goon's camera, and get his email address when we leave later.
Cocky, we decide we'll now just stay outside the lift shaft. The youth players haven't grassed us into security, so we're all good. But we will get caught sooner rather than later - that's a fact - so if the Messis Xavis and Iniestas of the team could head up soon that'd be grand.
One of the lifts goes again. From four, to one, then back up to four with a ping. This time, the doors open and there stands Jonathan dos Santos. And the young midfielder, could not be nicer. He smiles, we get photos, he signs my ball, says bye, and heads through the wooden doors. 'Your secret's safe with me, boys,' I like to think he's telling us with another glancing smile as he heads away. Good guy.
But as soothing as the friendly Mexican's smile may have been, I'm getting anxious. We need the big names and we need them fast. The lift does nothing for a while: we dance between the stairs and the lifts with every slight noise on the corridor side of the wooden doors. Squeaky bum time.
The lift starts to move. We can hear it. Yes, it stops at floor one. Yes, it's rising. Bing, it stops at our floor. Give us a big name.
The door opens and it's an awkward stand-off. Dani Alves, Alexis Sanchez, Javier Mascherano, Alex Song and Pinto stand facing us, not moving for what feels like a lifetime.
They know we shouldn't be there. We know we shouldn't be there. They know we know we shouldn't be there. It's a horrible, horrible moment.
But someone, in making the slightest movement from behind Alex Song, behind Pinto, brings the situation to life. This wee guy wants to see what the hold up is; what's happening here.
Out peeks Lionel Messi.
It took me a second to click that it was him - he really looked tiny. I suppose most people would flanked by Alex Song and Pinto. But this was him. This was Leo Messi. The greatest footballer to ever live was here, two feet in front of us, peering at us from a lift where every player's body language and overly-stunned reaction to two autograph hunters made them look they'd come face to face with two axe-murderers.
And then I realised. They had. Well, one anyway.
The nutcase beside me went berserk with excitement, torpedoing himself directly at Messi, foregoing even the thought of any niceties, manners or spacial awareness as he lunged at the goal-machine.
A convict in waiting, the moron was grabbed by Pinto, who in almost a father's role to Messi shielded his boy from this insane autograph hunter.
"My friend, my friend," calmingly pled the peace-keeping goalie, rushing the other five through the wooden doors as I stood flabbergasted, ball and Sharpie wielding arms floating out in front of me as I stood in shock at the utter mayhem this idiot had just caused.
He'd completely blown it, and now we were done for. We'd missed out on Messi, the rest of that star-studded lift, and all the huge names just moments from arriving at our signature plateau.
He knew that as well as I did. But that didn't stop him.
"Fuck it," he said, and through the wooden hallway doors he flew. He was after Messi and he was getting him one way or another.
Or maybe he wasn't. From the relative unsafety of the lift landing, I heard shouting Spanish voices and an almighty ruccus coming from the corridor.
This moron, like hundreds before him on and off the field, had tried to take on Lionel Messi. Most are duty-bound to end up second-best against the little genius week in week out in La Liga, maybe leaving with a bruised ego after one too many nutmegs and a dizziness from chasing his tail all night.
This guy though, well, I never did know what happened on the reverse side of those doors. But I'd think it would be fair to guess he took a beating. Most do when they come up against the Barca superstar.
I, however, left in one piece after whizzing down the emergency stairwell and out through the kitchens. And my FC Barcelona ball, hand-signed by the charming Mr dos Santos, has remained one of my pride and joys ever since.

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