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Shaq Moore: The American Who Went from Worshipping Messi to Marking Him

It's every young footballer's dream—playing a match at the Camp Nou. Shaquell Moore, or "Shaq", as his teammates at Levante call him, tingles again when he recalls the memory. What springs to mind is that he used to "play" at the Camp Nou on the FIFA Soccer video game as a kid growing up in Powder Springs, a town on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia that could pile its inhabitants into the stadium five times without filling it.

Now here he was in early January 2018 as a 21-year-old getting to experience the real thing in a La Liga match against Leo Messi's Barcelona.