Iranian student Reza Parastesh looks so much like his sporting hero Lionel Messi that it almost landed him in jail for disrupting public order this week
Reza Parastesh poses for a selfie with fans in Tehran. Pic/AFP
Iranian student Reza Parastesh looks so much like his sporting hero Lionel Messi that it almost landed him in jail for disrupting public order this week. So many people came out to take selfies with Parastesh in the western city of Hamedan over the weekend that police rushed him into a station and impounded his car to stop the chaos and clear traffic.
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Reza (left) and Lionel Messi
The resemblance is so uncanny that Eurosport UK reportedly used his photo by accident on Twitter recently while referring to the real Messi. The furore began a few months ago when Parastesh's football-mad father pressured the 25-year-old into posing in a number 10 Barcelona jersey and sending the pictures to a sports website. "I sent them one night and by the morning they had called me and said I should come in quickly for an interview," he told AFP.
Currently, he's fully booked with media interviews and has even landed modelling contracts in football-obsessed Iran. His goal now is to meet his hero in Barcelona. "Being the world's best football player, Messi has more work than he can handle. I could be his representative when he's busy," he said.