A young Syrian refugee`s dreams came true when she met Lionel Messi and his Barcelona teammates after the club invited her to attend a La Liga match earlier this month.


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Nujeen Mustafa, 18, who suffers from cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair, fled her hometown of Aleppo two years ago with her sister Nasrin.


The two girls made a 5,600km (3,479 mile) journey to Cologne where they were sheltered as refugees. After discovering that Nujeen was a fan of Barca, the club surprised her by arranging for her to visit Spain and watch them play Celta Vigo on Dec. 2.


"Messi has a kind of a baby face, he looks younger even though he`s 30, so it`s like `you have grown up now` because I know him since 2007," Nujeen told Reuters in an interview.


"At that time he looked like a baby," she added, before addressing the five-times Ballon d`Or winner: "You have changed, you look like an adult now."


"He`s a really shy guy, that hasn`t changed," said Nujeen, who hopes Barcelona win six titles again to match their feat in 2009 when they won the King`s Cup, La Liga, the Champions League, the Spanish Super Cup, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup.


Nujeen, who speaks Arabic, French, English and German, has become a symbol of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) and hopes peace will someday return to her country.



"Sometimes I feel homesick, I ask myself what am I doing here, I want to go back home where I lived and loved you know, but I want to move forward I don`t like being a victim, I am a survivor.


"I dream of becoming a physicist and perhaps an astronaut and I dream of... yeah one of my dreams is to meet the Queen of England and I still want to."