Genetics expert reckons he can create a clone of Lionel Messi

Anything to get past Financial Fair Play...

Cloning humans has long been a fantasy of science fiction writers and people who like their girlfriends a little too much, but finally one expert reckons he could produce an exact replica of Lionel Messi. Arcadi Navarro, head of the European Genome-Phenome Archive, is the bright spark who believes the Barcelona magician can be recreated with the level of scientific innovation already available. "Messi could be cloned with current techniques," he told Spanish radio station Cadena SER. "We would achieve a being very similar to Messi, the result would look like Messi’s twin, as if two twins had been born and we had frozen one of them for 20 or 30 years." Of course, even Navarro admits that the clone would then have to basically live a second-by-second retelling of Messi's life to have a chance of possessing his talent. "This person would have the same potential, but his [Messi's] qualities have a genetic component as well as others that are based on his education and environment," he added. "Messi is not who he is only because of genetics, but also for everything he has lived through, his education, his life in La Masia, the treatment he received. Genetics gives us potential, it is then our job to complete it." Exactly what doomsday clone scenario carrying out such an act will lead to is hard to tell. Will it lead to a Star Wars style attack or an island theme park full of roaming Messis, each more lethal than the last? Watch this space.