For decades, football has been known as a beautiful game which unifies people beyond boundaries of class, race and nationality. And there's no greater evidence of this than this picture of a child from Dohuk in Iraq, who's wearing a plastic Messi jersey that everyone's searching for. It all started with a tweet to find the boy:

RT to help us find this kid so we can get him the Messi shirt he deserves... pic.twitter.com/hKNvIkPXoX

— BreatheSport (@BreatheSport) January 18, 2016

As the image of the boy with a plastic bag jersey with "Messi 10" took the internet by storm, it reached the football star himself, who is now keen on helping the kid by providing help. A fan page of Lionet Messi tweeted that they were contacted by his team to find the boy, so that they can arrange something for him, although there has not been any official word by Messi himself.

We got DM from Leo's team. They want to know who this kid is so that Leo can arrange something for him. RT & spread https://t.co/MylJyDOpsu

— Leo Messi (@messi10stats) January 18, 2016

For now though the hunt continues. But then this is hardly the first time that a football star has reached out to a less privileged fan. The incident is similar to that of a Syrian boy, who was taken to meet with Real Madrid star Christiano Ronaldo, after the world was shocked by images of his father being tripped by a Hungarian camerawoman.