Anyone who thought Lionel Messi dyed his hair blond just for fun or for no good reason was wrong. Emphatically wrong.

The Barcelona superstar caused quite the furore – well, a fairly ridiculous one, at least – back in July when his partner Antonella Roccuzzo posted an Instagram photo of his radical new style.

Now the burning issue of the summer has finally been resolved: why did Messi ditch his brown hair for the Aaron Ramsey look?

And now Messi has revealed the reason:

“I made a change to start from zero,” he said on Argentine TV.

“I was emerging from a lot of controversies, of things that had happened to me, and I said to myself: 'You've got to break this and start again.'”

What controversies? Well, the 29-year-old quit international football after Copa America heartbreak – his third major final defeat in three years.

And there was the small matter of being found guilty in his tax fraud case in Spain.