Messi: “I've only read one book in my life, I cannot bear Tango music, and my wife hates football”

And he says his Italian wife, Antonia Roccuzzo, has 'no interest whatsoever' in football.

“Sometimes I'll come home and tell her I've scored a hat-trick, but she doesn't pay any attention to me,” Messi, who celebrates his 26^th birthday on Monday, confessed.

“We never talk about football and I never watch it on TV,” he adds.

Despite being born and brought up in Argentina, the player described as the 'best footballer in the world' says he knowns 'practically nothing' about controversial and world-famous leader Che Guevara, a revolutionary who was born in the central-western city of Mendoza – although who has extended family living in Parcent (Alicante) in Spain.

And he cannot stand Tango music and dance, the traditional tune of his country.

“When I hear Tango music on the radio, I switch to another station,” he revealed in an interview with the pull-out supplement Sette in Italian national daily newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.

Whilst Messi has had his own biography written and is due to have a film made about his 'rags-to-riches' life – born to a humble background in working-class Argentina and having to work twice as hard at his sport due to being very short for his age – the only book he has ever read in his life is the life story of Latin American legend Diego Armando Maradona.

Father of one, the Barça player says he baths and changes nappies for his baby son Thiago, and that he cried when the baby was born 'because it was a difficult birth'.

Three-times winner of World Player of the Year, Messi has yet to win a World Cup playing for his country team, but he is considered – along with his fellow Latin player, Brazilian-born Neymar da Silva – to be Barça's secrete weapon.

'Leo' and his father Jorge Horacio have been charged with tax fraud amounting to over four million euros, and are due to testify shortly.

But both say they are horrified by the accusations, since they merely placed all their financial and tax affairs in the hands of their accountants to deal with.

His lawyer says Messi and his dad have always scrupulously complied with their tax obligations in Spain, and Barça manager Sandro Rosell says the club is 'in no doubt' about Messi's innocence and will supply him with legal assistance should he need it.