What’s it like to face a young phenom like Messi, Bellingham?

We all remember the most talented kid from our hometown. You might have heard tales of their triumphs in classrooms and playgrounds, or perhaps you became one of their unfortunate victims (in my youth it was Fulham midfielder Harrison Reed, who was also an infuriatingly good cricketer.) But chances are that your local legend didn’t develop into a World Cup or Champions League winner.

The international popularity of football means that to even make the grade as a professional you must possess an almost freakish combination of skill and mental strength from an early age. It requires a prodigious talent who can run rings around all the other kids on the pitch and stun the watching adults too. And, even then, not every one of those prospects will make the grade as a professional, let alone become one of the best in the world.

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As Inter Miami star Lionel Messi captains Argentina in their bid to retain the World Cup and Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham approaches his 23rd birthday while competing at a fourth major tournament with England, here are firsthand accounts from those who got an early glimpse of greatness.

“It wasn’t normal, the speed with which he drove the ball.”

Just like everything else in his life, Messi’s exploits in Barcelona’s youth teams have taken on an almost mythic quality. In grainy videos you can see a fleet-footed, wispy lad terrorizing the opposition. There is an instant familiarity, though, to the craft and guile of a left foot that has since turned the Argentine into a living deity for many.

Back in the early 2000s, word of a prophetically talented boy was beginning to spread within the Catalan club. The name Messi eventually reached Álex Garcia — now Las Palmas’ assistant manager — back when he was on the staff at Barça’s La Masia academy. Garcia, who coached a Barça golden generation that included Gerard Pique and Cesc Fàbregas at youth level, still vividly remembers watching with awe as the boy from Rosario left defenders in his wake.

“The first time I saw Messi was when I was coach of Barcelona’s Cadete A team [under-16s]. Tito Vilanova was the Cadete B [U15s] coach,” Garcia tells ESPN. “At that time, we shared the same pitch. He told me that there was a little Argentine player who played very well and who understood the game like few others. That made me stay more than once to watch him, even when I wasn’t his coach.

“What made the difference at that age was that he went like nobody else in one-on-ones with tremendous speed. It wasn’t normal, the speed with which he drove the ball. And that, as the years went by, didn’t change. Well, he got better and better, as we all saw in his professional career.

“He had many things that made him special on a footballing level, but above all, he was a child who listened like no other to the corrections, instructions and advice he was given. Ah, and always with his eyes wide open. That, at such a young age, is very important.

“To venture when he was 14 years old that he was going to be what he has become would be very daring of me. He had an innate talent, that’s indisputable, but then so many factors come into play that you don’t know if you can make it or not. What was clear to us at Barça, at La Masia, is that if he didn’t have any major injuries, he was going to become a professional without any doubt whatsoever.

“I could count the spectacular goals by the thousands, both in training and in matches. When he wanted to, he solved the game quickly. He had that gift. He was very, very responsible and he knew that when it was time to be Messi, he became Messi.”

“He didn’t look like a child, he looked ready-made.”

Reuben Duncan remembers feeling fairly pleased with himself when he traveled to play for Millwall against Birmingham in an academy match. “It was one of my first games that I played for the U23s,” he says. “I was 17 years old and playing with lads about three or four years older than me. It was my first start.”

The experience was enhanced by the fact the match was being played at St Andrew’s — Birmingham City’s stadium. “I remember at the start of the day there was a bit of extra buzz around,” he says. “Normally at those games nobody is usually there, maybe a few parents and club coaches and officials, the game is usually around 12 p.m. on a weekday. I always remember there were more people there that day and looking back I guess that was something to do with Bellingham being there.”

Bellingham would go on to make his first-team debut in 2019 at 16 years and 38 days of age. After just one season at his boyhood club he joined Borussia Dortmund. In 2023 he moved to Real Madrid in a €103 million transfer and ended his first season at the Bernabéu as a LaLiga title and Champions League winner.

“Youth players often had to learn to be tough physically. Tackles, headers, 50-50s, that’s sort of like a learned behavior. It’s not a given that players will always do that. [But] there was a time that the ball dropped down in midfield and he really clattered into someone. Normally you wouldn’t really notice. But that time you thought: ‘Ooh, he’s really left something on him there.’ It wasn’t like a really timid tackle where he was trying to get out the way. He really put himself about. He wasn’t the type of player who was all pretty on the ball and not much else.

“After the game we came back into the changing room and everyone was talking about the game … The coach came in and said, ‘You know their No. 10 today?’ I was thinking, ‘Yeah he was a good player.’ Then the coach said, ‘He’s just turned 15.’ We all couldn’t believe it. ‘How?!’ It was like a joke.

“He was a physical player which is sort of why we were surprised he was that young. You hear stories about a Joe Cole or a player like that who is quite diminutive, technically excellent but obviously young. But he didn’t look like that physically. He didn’t look like a child, he looked ready-made. “When someone makes the jump up to a higher level you expect to notice — get pushed around a bit by the older lads, not quite sharp or concentrating — but with him you didn’t notice it at all. There were first-team reserves playing in that game who would’ve been nearly 10 years older than him. And he completely fitted in, you didn’t notice that he looked out of place at all. I couldn’t believe it, 15 and playing for the reserves.

“When you make a step up you sometimes don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, physically and literally. You just want to get through the game and learn but it felt like he was really putting himself about, he didn’t just want to be part of a group, he wanted to be noticed.”

Duncan name-checks another young player who stood out from the rest. Back in the 2010s, Callum Hudson-Odoi was the jewel in Chelsea’s all-conquering academy system, inspiring the U18s’ treble success of 2016-17 and winning the U17 World Cup with England later that year.

While injuries and inconsistency have plagued the winger’s career since he made his first-team debut in 2017, he has found his feet again at Nottingham Forest. It’s easy to forget that Bayern Munich once offered Chelsea a loan deal with a £70 million ($88.1 million) option to make Hudson-Odoi’s transfer permanent.

“I remember playing against [Jadon] Sancho and [Oliver] Skipp, but the one that I remember was Hudson-Odoi,” Duncan says. “There are players who have gone on to great things but at the time you never quite saw it. [With] a player like Hudson-Odoi it was very clear that he was a level above.

“I remember playing them in a cup game at U15s and we were beating Chelsea 2-1 at halftime, and we were thinking, ‘This is going to be great, we’re going to be the team to beat Chelsea,’ which is a massive thing at youth level — they go through most seasons unbeaten. But he just turned it on in the second half, scored two, set up another and they won 4-2. I remember he cut in from the right wing when I was playing in midfield. He has come across the front and I thought, ‘You know what, he’s 25 yards out, I’ll just shepherd him onto his left foot, no problem.’ He’s just gone, ‘thank you very much,’ shifted it onto his left foot and smashed it into the top corner.”

“She dribbled through the whole midfield, all the way through the defense.”

Before winning two World Cups and becoming one of the USWNT’s brightest stars for more than a decade, Morgan was earning her stripes in the U.S. college system. Morgan’s talent, though, meant that she was representing her country while still a full-time student, competing against her peers as she bided her time before turning professional. One of her opponents was Gilda Doria, a Duke University alumna who remembers playing against Morgan at the University of Florida.

“[Morgan] was playing with Cal Berkeley,” Doria says. “She had just come back from scoring in the 91st minute to send the U.S. national team to the World Cup [against Italy in November 2010]. So I think she was fresh off the flight.

“I specifically remember one play where she dribbled through the entire field and hit the post, almost scored. But she was just all over the field. She was super fast, very technical. She had an aura to her on the field, too. I had just played her that one time, but it was definitely very memorable, and I knew walking off the field why she was a rising star at the time.”

That audacious run past almost every member of her team is something that Doria still reminisces about today. “We had given a square ball in the midfield and she was kind of lower [deeper] off the defensive line and she just took the ball from, I would say, 70 yards out and she dribbled through the whole midfield, all the way through the defense,” Doria recalls. “Our center back slid to try to tackle and missed, and she kept dribbling and thankfully hit the post. But she did score that game.”

More than 200 goals followed in Morgan’s trophy-laden career, turning her into a legend at home and abroad by the time she announced her retirement in 2024. But it is another one of her USWNT teammates who gave Doria the most trouble growing up.

Morgan Gautrat played with and against Doria at various age groups around Florida before making her name in the NWSL and national team, famously setting up Tobin Heath’s goal in the 2015 World Cup final. “I started playing with her when I was probably 12 years old in the Olympic development program,” Doria says.

“There was no way to get the ball off of her. She was very smooth, very skilful. She wasn’t super physical at that time. She hadn’t developed that yet, but her ability on the ball was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Her vision, too. I don’t know if she was trained tactically or not, but she was super tactical at an age that no one really knew what that was, but her ability on the ball was next level.

“Soon after she got picked up by the U17 national team. I think we were about 14 or 15 at the time, so she got picked up above the age group we were at and that was kind it for her.

“I do remember one game specifically, it was 2011. They were the No. 1 team in the country and I was playing at Duke. We both played in centre-midfield and we were playing at UVA [University of Virginia]. I just remember how exhausted I was when I was man-marking her and she was still getting the ball, finding space, distributing perfectly.

“We ended up winning the game, but I don’t know, I thought I was causing a nuisance with her, but she was still finding pockets of space and I’m sure she was very used to that at the level she was playing at … But I am still exhausted thinking about that game!”

“You just couldn’t get near him.”

Oxlade-Chamberlain was widely acclaimed within academy and youth coaching circles and he was promptly fast-tracked to the Southampton first team, making his debut as a 16-year-old in a 5-0 win over Huddersfield Town in 2010. Over the next two years, Oxlade-Chamberlain would be named in the PFA League One team of the year, get promoted to the Championship, sign for Arsenal in a £12 million deal and make his England debut.

However, while he has lifted major silverware with Arsenal and Liverpool, injuries have prevented Oxlade-Chamberlain from becoming one of the best players in Europe — a destiny that for so long seemed inevitable. Currently plying his trade in Scotland at Celtic, Oxlade-Chamberlain is still regarded by many in England as the most dominant academy player the country has produced this century.

“I went for a three-day trial at Southampton when I was 18 where we played against the U16s and there was a 15-year-old playing and I was just like, ‘This guy’s incredible.’ He was the best player on the pitch,” says former Wycombe Wanderers midfielder David Wheeler, who now works as a sports psychologist.

“It was Oxlade-Chamberlain. He was just so sharp. He had obviously very fast acceleration and speed and stuff, but his speed of thought and decision-making as well and his agility was just incredible that you just couldn’t get near him. He was comfortably the smallest player on the pitch, but he was the best as well.”

ESPN’s Moises Llorens contributed to this report.