Ten years into his career and long before the beatification, they're already collecting Lionel Messi's holy relics.
Prime among them is the napkin on which his father signed his first La Liga contract. That is football's Magna Carta. It's the beginning of the current era.
Eventually it will end up in FC Barcelona's museum, which already has a loft-sized space dedicated to Messi. No club has featured so many legends, yet Messi is the first player they've honoured in this way while still active.
At the time of signing in 2000, Messi was 13 years old and suffering from a hormone deficiency that stunted his growth. Despite the evident quality of the young player, no Argentine club would cover the roughly $1,000 a month required to treat the problem (daily leg injections, administered by Messi himself). It will go down as the most ill-judged economy in sporting history.
Barcelona paid $60,000 for his signature, and promised to find his father a job in Spain. Even for a club of Barcelona's size and ambition, it was seen as a bit of flyer.
As a teenager, Messi stubbornly refused to grow past five-feet tall. His teammates began to call him la pulga (the flea). He was too shy to speak to anyone. So they also called him il mudo (the mute).
Amongst the aesthetes, he was a recognized commodity well before his top-level debut. Pre-YouTube, you knew him from the stories: the ten-goal games; slaloming through entire teams. One youth opponent famously dropped to the ground as Messi sprinted forward and tried to grab him by the ankles.
By the time he finally arrived – all of 17 years old – he was advertised as the most precocious talent since his countryman, Diego Maradona. A skinny little kid, and he'd already been jacked up onto a towering, pencil-thin pedestal.
Since then, the core of Messi's mythology is that he has never disappointed. He's pulled so many of us out of our chairs over the years, it's a wonder he hasn't thrown off the tilt of the world.
He played his first match for Barcelona ten years ago this week, subbed in in the 82nd minute against Espanyol. Afterward, he'd say, "I'll remember those ten minutes my whole life."
He's had a few of those days since.
The very best slow the game down. They make it seem articulated – every small move visible and connected to each successive one.
With the ball at his feet and attacking from the edge of the box, Messi appears to move in high-def slow motion. Everyone around him is just standing still. Messi performs miracles. The most consistent of them – folding time.
Even as the tide of his greatness continued to rise and rise, you already knew you were never going to see the like of him again. His peculiar proportions married to the super-abundance of fast-twitch muscle and an instinctive fearlessness. Shortly after first noticing him, you were already beginning to miss him.
There is only so much Messi to be enjoyed, and we are daily running out of it. What separates the experience of watching him from any of his contemporaries is the bitter-sweetness resulting from that ongoing sense of loss.
The superlatives are, well, superlative. Four World Player of the Year awards. The calendar year in which he scored a staggering 91 goals in all competitions. At 27, he's one tally away from becoming La Liga's all-time leading scorer. The total value of the buyout clause in his contract – the number that, if offered by a rival club, would trigger automatic transfer negotiations – is a reported $360-million. And that almost sounds reasonable.
Objectively, we lack the basis on which to make comparisons. Messi is playing the game at a time when the competition level is exponentially greater than it was even fifteen or twenty years ago. Matched against that superior skill, he is still better than anyone before him has ever been.
Then there's the shy charisma. Messi is the athlete your grandmother would build in a computer, if God were your grandmother.
He's a koala bear out on the pitch. You'd like to pick him up and put him in your pocket. Most great athletes slowly become paternal figures in our imagination. Messi is aging backwards, like Benjamin Button. He will always be everyone on Earth's kid-brother.
He's also the most famous face on the planet. He may be the most famous human to have every lived.
Nonetheless, after ten years of scrutiny, there have been no cracks in his winsome image. No angry outbursts; no sneaky cheats; no tell-alls from disgruntled former teammates.
This may be the rarest thing of all about Messi – he apparently is who he presents himself to be. A slightly befuddled young man about whom the only remarkable things are the lightness of his public persona and the depth of his gift.
That's why we all love him – he makes being special seem an uncomplicated business. Unlike his mirror image, Cristiano Ronaldo, there is nothing effortful about Lionel Messi. While Ronaldo flaps his arms frantically, Messi drifts along in the upper currents.
After finally making an impact at a World Cup this past summer (though not winning it), I'm coming around to the idea that Messi will eventually be regarded as the best of all time. It's less about talent and trophies, and more to do with emotion.
Alfredo Di Stefano was too ancient; Cruyff too gnomic; Pele too obscure; Maradona too louche.
Messi's brilliance is a familiar and open-armed thing. He invites you in. He wants to share this with you, regardless of your rooting interest. You recognize in him what you would like to believe about yourself – that a successful life is a function of luck and decency.
If you have both, there's nothing you might not find yourself managing.
Editor's note: An earlier version of his column included an incorrect dollar amount for Lionel Messi's buyout clause.
Cathal Kelly