Reza Parastesh, an Iranian student, looks so much like Lionel Messi that it almost landed him in jail for disrupting public order this week.
So many people came out to take selfies with Parastesh in the western city of Hamadan over the weekend that the police rushed him into a station and impounded his car to stop the chaos and clear traffic.
The furor began a few months ago when Parastesh’s soccer-mad father pressured him into posing in a No. 10 Barcelona jersey and sending the pictures to a sports website.
“I sent them one night and by the morning they had called me and said I should come in quickly for an interview,” he said.