The auction for the napkin that launched Lionel Messi's famous Barcelona career when he was 13 opened this week with a guide price of £300,000-£500,000 ($374,700-$624,500).
Bidding for the item amounts to £220,000 and will be open at British auction house Bonhams until May 17.
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The sale was initially scheduled for March, but was postponed due to a dispute over ownership of the napkin, which has been in the hands of Horacio Gaggioli, an Argentine agent, for two decades.
Josep Minguella, another adviser involved in the deal to bring Messi from Argentina, claimed possession of the napkin following news that it would be auctioned earlier this year.
Gaggioli disputed this, while Bonhams told ESPN that there were “no issues” regarding the sale of the napkin, which is listed on its website as “property of Horacio Gaggioli.”
Minguella has not responded to ESPN's request for comment. When Messi's father, Jorge, began to doubt Barça's commitment to his son in 2000, the club's then director of football, Carles Rexach, rushed to draw up an agreement on a napkin.
It was signed by Rexach, Minguella, who had helped bring Messi from South America, and Gaggioli, who helped negotiate the deal, serving as a promise for a first contract.
Since then, it has remained under Gaggioli's ownership in a secure vault in Andorra, the Principality north of Barcelona between Spain and France.
Negotiations for its incorporation into the Barça museum at the club's Spotify Camp Nou stadium have failed in the past.
The napkin was originally signed on December 14, 2000 at a Barcelona tennis club after Rexach received a frantic call from Jorge Messi threatening to take his son back to Argentina.
“It was then that, thinking on my feet, I decided everything,” Rexach told ESPN in 2020 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the signing.
“Why a napkin? Because it was the only thing I had on hand. I saw that the only way to relax was for Jorge to sign something, giving him some proof, so I asked the waiter for a napkin.
“I wrote: 'In Barcelona, on December 14, 2000 and in the presence of Messrs. Minguella and Horacio, Carles Rexach, sporting director of FC Barcelona, accepts, under his responsibility and without prejudice to dissenting opinions, to sign the player Lionel Messi. as long as we respect the agreed amounts.'
“I told Jorge that my signature was there and that there were witnesses, that with my name I would take charge directly, that there was nothing more to talk about and that he should be patient for a few days because Leo could now consider himself a Barça player. “
Messi, who now plays for Inter Miami in the MLS, became the best player in Barça's history, playing more games (778) and scoring more goals (672) than anyone else who has played for the club.
During more than 20 years at Barcelona, he won 10 LaLiga titles, seven Copas del Rey and four Champions League trophies while playing for the club before joining Paris Saint-Germain and later Inter Miami.
Individually, he has won the Ballon d'Or a record eight times and has also been named FIFA's The Best Player on three occasions.
International success with Argentina had eluded him until recently, but he eventually won the Copa América in 2021 and the World Cup in 2022, in addition to the Olympic Gold Medal he won in 2008.
