Messi turns up at random gym, trains while watching his own goals, meets fans

Valentina Jure was just going to the gym. She thought it’d be a day like any other. Suddenly, in through the door came a familiar face. At first, she wasn’t sure it was really him. But soon enough, she realized for sure. Lionel Messi had just entered a gym in Fisherton, a neighborhood in Rosario, the city from which the Argentine legend hails.

“He came in as if he was any other, I could not believe it,” the young Rosario resident told a local news outlet.

“He used the machines like any other; he was smiling with everyone.”

She says she told her friends on WhatsApp, and they simply could not believe it. But it was true.

Valentina has proof, a photograph of the Barcelona star training on the treadmill. Amusingly, the TVs are showing a compilation of his goals and he is watching them as he runs. She posted the picture on Twitter.

“I went to the gym and I found Messi watching Messi’s goals,” she wrote alongside the pictures.

The image went viral worldwide.

“I couldn’t believe it, literally, my phone was exploding. Journalists and people from around the world wrote to me, it was hard to believe.”

Her brother, Franco, took a picture with the Argentine star as well.

“Imagine training and then from nowhere, Messi shows up... well, it happened to me,” Franco wrote on his Twitter.

There’s just one thing Valentina wants to clear up.

“I just want to tell people the channel which showed his goals was already on when he got there. I want to clear that up because people have written to me that he is self-centered, and it’s nothing of the sort, he was extremely humble with every one of us who was there.”

Messi is currently on holiday in his home country of Argentina, and it seems he has been working on staying in tip-top shape. Barcelona play Espanyol in the Catalan derby on Saturday.