• Claudio Nancufil said to be a media sensation
• Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético show interest

An eight-year-old prodigy from the southern Andes has been identified as potentially the next Lionel Messi.

Claudio Nancufil, though small for his age, has become a media sensation since emerging as an unusual talent at the modest Martín Güemes club in the ski resort of Bariloche in Argentina.

“As soon as he started to play [aged four] he was already different from all the rest of his playmates with regards to technique,” the club president Marcelo Ernalz said.

“How he takes the ball stuck to his foot, brakes, stops, kicks, scores, shoots on goal, from when he was little he had all these distinct qualities.”

Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid have shown interest and the boy could go to Spain for trials in the New Year, according to the Madrid newspaper El Confidencial.

Manuel Otero, manager of a Barcelona-based PR agency Sueños Comunicaciones (dreams communications), visited the Nancufil family in Bariloche when he heard of Claudio’s talent and offered to represent them.

“After the Christmas holidays, ‘Claudito’ will go to try out with these three Spanish teams and then we’ll see what each of them offers us,” said Otero.

“We’ve had an invitation from River Plate for him to train for a week with them,” Otero added in a report in El Confidencial.

“[The family] are not closing any doors and England could also be a great destination for the player.”

“We’re happy because both the kid and his family deserve an opportunity like this,” Ernalz told Argentina’s Cadena 3 in a recent interview.

“He’s physically small and had the same growth problems detected in Messi when he was little, and he’s getting hormone treatment.”

His mother Viviana said Claudio, who is from a humble background with origins in the Mapuche Indians of the southern Andean mountain range, could not explain how he played.

“We asked him, how do you do that? And he said: ‘I don’t know. I just get it in my head and my feet move on their own. It’s like that. I don’t know how I play like that. My legs just go.’ That’s what he told us. We would kid him about it, we’d say that he ran by remote control.”

• Lionel Messi

theguardian.com