Messi Visits Qatar Football Academy On his day off from FC Barcelona, Lionel Messi jetted to Qatar to tour the Aspire Academy for Sports Excellence..

Sandro Rosell and Josep Colomer, formerly Barcelona youth scouts, have set up an academy in Qatar for excellent footballing youngsters from Africa, with Lionel Messi touring the facilities yesterday.

A handful of children were chosen from an original list of 400,000 from seven African countries to take part in training in Qatar. Yesterday, a U-14 team from the academy took on a U-15 opposition side from Porto.

As Messi looked on, he said, "The Aspire Academy is a very impressive facility, and the teams trained here have a great future in the world of football.

"It's really exciting to see how well-supported football is in Qatar."

Despite Messi's statement, Qatar's league is not particularly well-supported, with the money-men of the country perhaps seeing youth football rather than adult leagues as the way forward.

Messi is currently recovering from injury and could potentially make a comeback against Racing Santander at the weekend.