"Obviously, I am very thrilled. But, full credit goes to my teammates at Barcelona and the club supporters and members," Messi enthused.
"It's difficult to choose a moment of my matches this year. Fabulous moment for the club and me now," the Argentine star modestly said.
Earlier, die-hard fans waited anxiously for over three hours to get a glimpse of their favourite super-star - the one and only Messi - before the start of the 10th Dubai International Sports Conference (DISC).
All they wanted was to say hello to their dearest sports idol and they would not even have bothered to trouble Messi for an autograph on the script pads, soccer balls and T-shirts they carried in their backpacks.
Messi, a nominee for the Best Player of the year Award at the Globe Soccer Awards function later in the night, appeared briefly for a few minutes when the afternoon sessions of the DISC began, and a bigger dimension was given to the occasion when His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, joined the elite list of soccer dignitaries and shaikhs, again for a short while.
The Barcelona mega star and his club were the strong favourites to win the top awards in their categories among the various other honours and prizes on offer at the awards function at the same venue. Other football legends like Frank Lampard and Diego Maradona will also be present along with the elite panel of coaches, referees and senior administrators of the sport during the conference mainly themed 'Challenges and Achievements'.
The two-day seminar opened in the morning where Michele Uva, general manager, Italian Football Federation and Umberto Gandini, director, AC Milan took the top table for the discussion on 'Professional Football Club Model' at the hall adjacent to the event's main venue. During the pre-lunch discussion on 'Football's Future Challenges', Gianni Infantino, secretary general Uefa; Josep Maria Bartomeu, president, FC Barcelona; and Prince Ali bin Hussein, president of the Jordanian Football Association and a candidate for the Fifa presidency elections next year, talked at length on the subject.
Bartomeu, said: "One hundred and sixteen years in existence to the mostly widely followed club in the world - this is a huge honour for us and we have been lucky to have had players of immense class and character to help us through the long journey. Right now the players we have form a wonderful combination, and in defeat and victory, we keep learning every day from our experiences.
"Barcelona was the club of Cruyff, of Ronaldinho, today it is the club of Messi, tomorrow it will be the club of Neymar who still has room to improve. We have 200 million fans who follow us from every part of the globe, who are connected to our social media. We must think about the future and we are continuing to invest in preparing young players, not only in Spain. We teach football and life, and in life you also learn from defeat.
I see Capello and I remember that 4-0 AC Milan inflicted on us in Athens in a Champions League final. That match helped us, perhaps we are what we are today also because we lived through that horrible experience.
"This sport has given us the direction to move forward with a great amount of conviction that we can encourage the youth in their educational and sports careers. We give enough priorities in the allround character building process we have developed and keep improving at our academies in Spain and elsewhere." Uva said: "Club licensing has many plus points, so the difficulties we may encounter are more or less fully neutralised in the long run.
The European bodies looking after the sport's various needs and regulations under the Uefa umbrella need to get all the clubs on a single stage despite the different cultural backgrounds. United we need to be and we need standardisation instead of each club going in different ways to achieve their goals. The focus has to be on proper technique and time proven methods to keep everyone in the 'one family' format."
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