Lionel Messi speaking Japanese in bizarre TV advert from 2013 goes viral | OneFootball

Lionel Messi tends to keep himself to himself.

When he’s not reiterating his status as one of the greatest sportspeople of all time in front of millions of television viewers, Messi tends to be keeping as low of a profile as humanly possible for someone of his stature.

It’s well-known that the Paris Saint-Germain superstar isn’t the loudest and most colourful character in the dressing room, instead remaining largely quiet and upholding a humble persona.

Messi's humble personality

It's a trait that ultimately endears him to a whole lot of supporters, particularly those who have a hard time with athletes such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Floyd Mayweather who are a little more overt with how much they back themselves.

There's no right or wrong way to go about things, it just tends to be the case that Messi's softer demeanour draws a lot of admiration from those who look up to him.

Don't get it twisted, Messi can lose his rag and border on arrogance at times just like anybody, but he's definitely a lot more low-key can pretty much anybody else would be in his circumstances.

Messi's commercial endeavours

Nevertheless, when you're a seven-time Ballon d'Or winner with 366 million followers on Instagram alone, it's unavoidable that you'll sometimes be required to step outside of your comfort zone.

And while Messi is hardly one to strut his stuff away from the football pitch, his global status and the commercial deals that his success has led to nevertheless necessitates certain obligations.

Whether that's promoting a product on social media or taking part in the latest Pepsi advert for the World Cup, Messi is well versed in the fact that it's not always possible to keep your head down when the final whistle blows.

And over the years, it's been inescapable that a few of the commercial endeavours that Messi has become involved in have been - how shall we say? - more unexpected than others.

The recent 'Messi burger' with Hard Rock Cafe immediately comes to mind, but perhaps most surprising of all was a collaboration between the Barcelona legend and a Japanese company back in 2013.

Messi's viral advert in Japanese

As confirmed by ESPN in January of that year, Messi was the face of an advertising campaign for what appears to be SCALP-D, who market themselves as one of Japan’s most famous hair growth brands.

And the end product was so surreal and bizarre that it's once again gone viral this week with one particular Twitter video harvesting thousands upon thousands of retweets and 'likes'.

Rather aptly captioned: "Messi speaking Japanese is still one of the funniest thing you'll see today," the 15-second campaign is so unexpected that it'd be rude not to join all the other fans discovering it for the first time:

Is there anything he can't do?!

Fair play, Leo

Obviously, it goes without saying that Messi's appeal is thoroughly international and kudos to him for chasing whichever commercial deals that come his way no matter where they emanate from.

Just this summer, Messi found himself back in Japan as part of Paris Saint-Germain's pre-season campaign and drew in massive crowds alongside fellow superstars Kylian Mbappe and Neymar.

Marry that to a couple of appearances on Japanese television shows and it's fair to say that Messi has a rather random, though nevertheless endearing, association with the Asian country.

And it turns out that we now can't get enough of him trying his hand at Japanese while having a face full of foam washed off his skin. What a time to be alive.