Clearly Joey Barton is incorrigible. Retired since 2017, the former English midfielder has multiplied controversial outings since he hung up his crampons. Sexist comments, dubious references to the Holocaust… we can no longer count the inappropriate remarks made by the former Olympique de Marseille player. This time, Barton decided to attack Lionel Messi. In his podcast “Common Sense”, the native of Huyton estimated that the man with eight Ballons d’Or should have “an asterisk” next to his name in the charts. According to him, the Argentine footballer would be “genetically modified”.
“He took steroids from a very young age. He was given growth hormone and all sorts of medications to help him grow. As far as I know, no one else has done this. If you had let him grow naturally, he wouldn’t have been big enough to end up the way he did,” Barton said.
Renowned for his whimsical and often uncontrollable side when he was a player, the former Manchester City and Newcastle midfielder refers to the hormonal deficiency problems that marked Pulga’s youth. Taken in by FC Barcelona as a teenager, when he was already cited as one of the greatest hopes in world football, Lionel Messi was forced to inject himself with growth hormones at the age of 8.
A health problem affecting many children around the world and whose treatment is, obviously, not considered doping or genetic modification, as implied by Joey Barton.
