Reza Parastesh, a doppelganger of Barcelona and Argentina’s footballer Lionel Messi. He resembles a lot that once Eurosport UK reportedly used his photo by accident on Twitter recently when talking about the real Messi. The hype began a few months ago when Parastesh’s father pressured the 25-year-old into posing in a number 10 Barcelona jersey and sending the pictures to a sports website.
He almost landed to jail disrupting public order in the western Iranian city of Hamedan. Even so many people came out to take selfies with student Parastesh over the weekend that police rushed him into a station and impounded his car to stop the chaos and clear traffic.
While talking to the media, he said: “I sent my picture one night and by the morning they had called me and said I should come in quickly for an interview.”
“Now people really see me as the Iranian Messi and want me to mimic everything he does. When I show up somewhere, people are really shocked,” he said.
Now, after being famous as the doppelgänger of Lionel Messi, he is fully booked with media interviews and has even landed to modelling contracts as well.
