It was the headline that no Barcelona fan wanted or ever expected to hear: Lionel Messi wants out.
Across their 120-year history, Barcelona has had its fair share of legends pass through Camp Nou: Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona, Ronaldinho, Romario, Rivaldo, Michael Laudrup, Hristo Stoichkov, Ronald Koeman, Lazslo Kubala, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Carles Puyol – but none of them come close to Messi.
He is, by a considerable margin, the greatest ever player in the history of one of football’s greatest football clubs. Messi has scored 634 goals for Barcelona, 402 more than the club’s second most prolific player Cesar Rodriguez, while only Xavi (with 767) has played more games than his 731.
Messi has been at Barcelona for two decades, 16 years of which have been spent in the first-team and was meant to stay forever. He has become so synonymous with Barcelona that it is hard to imagine him playing in any colours other than the club’s iconic red and blue stripes.
So how has it come to this?
Boardroom bust-up
Just 11 days after Barcelona suffered their most humiliating defeat in decades against Bayern Munich, Messi sent a fax to the club outlining his desire to leave. That 8-2 humbling to the European Champions was the tip of the iceberg for Messi who has had concerns over the direction Barcelona have been heading in for some time.
Although Barcelona have won numerous La Liga and Copa del Rey titles in recent years, they have suffered three humiliating Champions League exits in the last three seasons to Roma, Liverpool and Bayern. Barcelona last won the competition in 2015 and there is a sense that the club has squandered Messi’s prime years.
Messi’s disillusionment with Barcelona stems from the boardroom. Josep Maria Bartomeu, Barca’s president since January 2014, has come in for intense criticism over the club’s transfer business in recent seasons. Despite lavishing hundreds of millions of euros on high-profile signings, Barcelona has failed to adequately replace the likes of Xavi, Iniesta, Dani Alves and worst of all, Neymar.
The club has also lurched from one manager and sporting director to the next. Newly-appointed manager Ronald Koeman decision to give Luis Suarez the Oumar Niasse treatment didn’t go down well with Messi who counts the Uruguayan as his best mate at the club, while outgoing sporting director Eric Abidal fell out spectacularly with the Argentine in January after accusing the players of giving up on Ernesto Valverde.
Where could he go?
Any club that wishes to sign Messi, which let’s face it is everyone, will have to pay the €700m (£627m) release clause in his contract. That’s Barcelona’s stance anyway, although Messi’s lawyers might have something to say about that.
According to those around Messi, his official declaration to leave entitles him to walk away from the club for free due to a break clause in his contract. A potential sticking point is that clause expired in June when the 2019-20 season was scheduled to finish, rather than in August when it actually did due to the pandemic.
Despite his status as the world’s best player, no club would be able to pay his release clause on top of his sky-high salary, reportedly just under a million pounds a week. Should Messi be available for free, though, that situation would change, although only a select few clubs would be able to afford him.
Manchester City are one club who could and the club’s strong Barcelona links off the pitch from Pep Guardiola on the touchline to Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano in the boardroom, could aid City’s cause. Messi won the Ballon d’Or in each of the four seasons he worked alongside Guardiola at Barcelona and scored 73 goals in only 60 games during his final campaign in charge.
Likewise, PSG would in theory, be able to match Messi’s salary and could use Neymar in an attempt to persuade him to move to Paris. Messi has frequently lobbied for Neymar’s return to Barcelona since he made his controversial switch to PSG in 2017 as they, along with Suarez, formed one of the most formidable front threes in football history in Catalunya.
Another club that has been linked with Messi in the past is Inter Milan but they lack the financial power and recent success of either City or PSG, having failed to win a trophy since 2011. The challenge of leading Inter back to the top of Italian football against Cristiano Ronaldo’s Juventus may appeal to Messi, though.
Messi has outlined a desire to join hometown club Newell’s Old Boys in the past but that is unlikely to happen at this time, while his ambitions of winning a fifth Champions League title would appear to rule out moves to China, Qatar or the MLS.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/31vcIOo
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