A five-year-old Afghan boy has become an online sensation in 2016 after pictures of him dressed in an improvised Lionel Messi jersey - made out of a plastic bag - went viral. Murtaza Ahmadi idolises the Argentina international but his impoverished family in rural Ghazni province, to the south-west of the capital Kabul, cannot afford to buy him a real kit. His elder brother Homayoun, 15, made him the plastic shirt with Messi's named scrawled in marker pen and posted the photos of Murtaza wearing it on Facebook two weeks ago. Murtaza was able to meet his idol during a friendly match in Qatar between Barcelona and the Al Ahli Saudi Fooball Club of Saudi Arabia, and the encounter did not disappoint. Ahmadi, roughly one-third the size of Messi, clung to Messi’s jersey and held the soccer star’s hand during the coin toss. The unlikely pair also posed for photos. Murtaza, so enthusiastic he didn’t want to leave the field, was literally carried to the sidelines by the game’s referee. “I'm very happy to have met my hero. It is a dream for me,” Murtaza said. Ahmadi’s unrestrained glee at meeting his idol shows the power of sport in bringing people together.