If it was to be Lionel Messi’s Camp Nou swansong, the eulogy was fitting. Barcelona scraped inelegantly into the Champions League quarter-finals because of one man and despite most of the others. Their football was bloodless and perfunctory, a contorted Chinese whisper of their passing ideals. Here was a team comprised of not-any-mores, just-not-quite-clickers and why-are-they-even-heres. And Messi.
Watching Messi in this team is – should we now say was? – even more hypnotic than seeing Barcelona in their pomp; the worse they get, the more he stands out. Sit in the sun-bleached seats of the Camp Nou and witness the global pilgrimage around you. A father and son wave a Bolivian flag. Three seats down a Belarussian family chatter excitedly in double speed, presumably reflecting on the distance, money and time invested to reach their Mecca. They’re not here for Barcelona, not really; they’re here for Messi. That is what this club are letting slip away.
And it’s not just the supporters. Luis Figo described watching Messi as “like having an orgasm”. Thierry Henry spoke of having to remind himself that he couldn’t just stand and watch him dribble but had a duty to keep up with play. Thiago Alcantara, now a multiple Champions League winner, speaks as a fanboy more than a teammate: “People often say to me they saw Pele and Maradona play. In the future, I will be able to say I saw Messi play.”
Messi may still stay. His official intention to leave could be part of a power play to force out president Josep Maria Bartomeu and use his political sway to force overdue change that should not have required his intervention. But it isn’t meant to work like this. Players are supposed to grow older at a quicker rate than their superclubs rather than the other way round.
But stay or go, and Pandora’s box has been opened. Barcelona have inadvertently forced a player that forever considered this to be his home to the point of mutiny. The grim reality is that they have no comeback. Messi is right. Every supporter can see it.
For that astonishing desecration, Barcelona deserve all their headaches. If they are shocked by the force of Messi’s will to leave, they created the monster. Their scattergun spending – a touch under £800m on transfer fees in a touch under three years – did not create breathing space for their best player but suffocated him. Antoine Griezmann and Ousmane Dembele, both substitutes for the quarter-final, each cost more to buy than Bayern Munich’s starting XI.
La Masia has long been a nagging issue. A series of misjudged coaching appointments, the early sale of graduates (Mauro Icardi, Andre Onana, Thiago, Alex Grimaldo) and the punishment by FIFA for the illegal transfer of Under-18 players all eroded the academy’s untouchable status. For the first time in their history, Spain’s Under-21 squad for the European Championship last summer contained no Barcelona players.
The uncomfortable truth is that other clubs now do Barcelona better than them. ‘Mes que un club’ was warped from philosophical mantra to marketing slogan, beginning with the rampant commercialisation and rapid spending and ending with Qatari sponsorship. If Barcelona stand for anything at all, they stand for Messi.
The irony is obvious: It is precisely that principle that has irked Messi most. He has grown weary of being a one-man superclub. Diminished collective returns eased only by his individual majesty became overpoweringly frustrating. Between the ages of 24 and 33, Barcelona have taken Messi to as many Champions League finals as Tottenham and Borussia Dortmund and fewer than Atletico Madrid.
There is a theory that having the best player in modern history can be a curse as well as a blessing. Possessing Messi was the ultimate safety net, like playing a computer game with the damage turned off. But he became the cheat code that persuaded Barcelona against introspection on every other issue, asked to rage against the dying lights that surrounded him on and off the field. Why worry – we have Messi?
Perhaps that speaks of an uncomfortable truth, presenting Messi as part of the problem as well as the solution. Were Barcelona run strategically and sensibly, they would have flourished as he flourished. But in this shoddy state, Messi was the easiest veil to place over systemic issues that nobody seems able – or even willing – to solve. Their pièce de résistance became the standout piece of a resistance movement that has ended here.
That, then, is Barcelona’s greatest crime. Not that Messi was owed better – he is incredibly well-paid – but that they owed better to themselves. They are a control experiment for how to mismanage a superclub, one that possessed great riches, glorious history, a global support and the greatest player of his – and perhaps any other – generation and somehow managed to squander those extraordinary advantages. Barcelona’s final unique selling point has been pushed to the point of no return. Messi will miss them, of that there is no doubt. But they will miss him more.
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