Lionel Messi Donates Over 72,000 Euro to Doctors Without Borders After Winning Lawsuit

Lionel Messi has won more than 72,000 euro in court, and he will be donating all of it to Doctors Without Borders, according to Sports Illustrated.

Messi sued Spanish newspaper La Razón for an article called “Sonatina” by Alfonso Ussía, in which the author implied the Argentine star was doping.

In a column which called Messi “lazy” and criticized him for “undeservedly” winning the award for best player at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Ussía argued that the reason Messi played so “badly” was that he was no longer doping. The author made the accusation with seemingly no real basis:

For me, he is no longer of the age to justify the dose of growth hormones he gets. And he, along with his doctors, have been warned that his growth has reached its limit, and not to take one more hormone.

As we all know, Messi’s biggest strength is his huge stature, which has been increasing every year until he turned about 26, at which point he was over 20 feet tall.

Oh wait no, Messi is famously short and his biggest strengths are his technique and vision. So how does this make sense again? Does the guy have any evidence whatsoever to justify such a claim? Maybe that’s why he lost the court case.

Messi did take growth hormones when he was a child to treat a medical condition which made him have lower levels than normal. He was given treatment to return his levels to normal, again when he was a child, but those were discontinued afterwards.

There is no evidence that he, or FC Barcelona or Argentina, broke any rules in his treatment.

Doctors Without Borders, known as Médecins Sans Frontières in their home country of France, is an NGO known for employing over 30,000 people - most of them doctors, nurses, sanitation experts, and so on - mostly in war-torn regions and developing countries affected by disease. About 90% of their funding comes from private donations such as this.