After winning the Ballon d’Or award for the fifth time in his career, soccer fans were looking forward to watching soccer star Lionel Messi play in the 2016 Summer Olympics. However, due to the South American Football Championship, the twenty-eight-year-old will not play for the Argentina soccer team in Rio, but rather all over the United States in this year’s Copa America.

The Copa America is one of the world’s most popular soccer championships, where national teams, including the USA, compete against teams such as Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. This year, Teams will face off in the States in many places including Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium. With the Copa America in September, the Olympics in August, and FIFA World Cup qualifiers in November, Messi and his coach, Gerardo Martino, admitted that the busy schedule would be too much for the world-renowned soccer star. According to ESPN, Martino also mentioned that Barcelona will also be partaking in multiple tournaments, which will no doubt put excessive pressure on Messi.

On January 11, Messi was given his fifth Ballon d’Or, an annual award given by FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, to the world’s best male soccer player. In 17 games, playing in the Spanish Primera Division, Lionel Messi scored 12 goals, and assisted five. However, his stats are not the only thing that is extremely impressive. Even at a young age, Messi was an amazing soccer player. However, when he was eleven, Messi was diagnosed with a hormone growth deficiency, which threatened to keep him from becoming the star he is today.

Messi started a three-year treatment that would help him grow properly; a treatment that was too expensive for his family to afford, and over 6000 miles away. However, it was his current club, Barcelona, who wanted to sign him in the youth program, La Masia, that offered to pay for the medicine. For most eleven year olds, this treatment option was scary; Messi had to inject medicine through a needle into his leg every night. According to The Telegraph, a former teammate of Messi, Gerardo Grighini, states “I don’t think just anyone has the mental strength when they’re only 10 or 11 to say ‘I’m going to do this because it’s going to help me in the future … but he knew it would help him fulfil his dream.” Now, only an inch and a half shorter than the average Argentina man, it shows that this was only a minor setback in Messi’s soon to be major soccer career.

Wherever Messi went, he was smaller than a lot of players, but it was his amazing ball control that truly made him stand out from the rest. “Technically, he was gifted like no one boy I have ever seen,” Former coach Gabriel Digeralamo tells The Telegraph. Even at nine years old, Messi was able to keep the ball in the air by kicking the ball up over 12,000 times. His amazing technicality with the ball is what kept Messi from being overlooked, and eventually led to him being a world-renowned star. After leading Argentina to the Gold medal in Beijing in 2008, Barcelona and Argentina fans agree the Argentine forward will be missed. However, Portugal forward Cristiano Ronaldo, Brazilian forward Neymar, and Swedish forward Zlatan Ibrahimović will possibly be the top soccer stars in this year’s Olympic games.