Capello: 'I wanted to bring Messi to Juventus'
Capello joined Juventus as the club's manager in the summer of 2004 and left the bianconeri in the summer of 2006 to join Real Madrid, where he spent just a single season.
In an interview that Capello gave to Sky Sports recently, he talked about his first introduction to Lionel Messi during his early days at Barcelona.
He said: "There are categories and he, Maradona and Pelé fall into that of geniuses, those who invent things that others can't even think of. They are not built, there have it in their DNA. I met Messi for the first time at the Gamper Trophy, we played Juve-Barcelona. There were 90,000 spectators and he was 16.
"I approached Rijkaard after 15-20 minutes and asked him: 'Listen, can you loan him to me for an year? 'He was 16, he came in and sent everyone into raptures. It didn't take Fabio Capello to understand that he was a genius.
"What did Rijkaard say to me? I knew that they already had three foreigners and could not put the fourth foreigner on the list and he said 'Fabio don't worry, there are no problems we will somehow manage to play him'. The Catalans also had their intrigues. Even then Messi was impressive ".