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Lionel Messi was late. He was late to formally tell Barcelona that he was leaving, which is why in the end he could not, he stayed within the June 10 deadline that he had not met. And now he was late to tell everyone he was staying. Ten days after sending a burofax to announce that he was leaving, he announced that he was entering again. The statement came in at five o’clock, they said, but at five thirty there was no signal, no matter how many times you pressed to update. At 10:30, there was still nothing. Twenty-thirty, 20 a, 10 a. Come on, will you?
It was not until six that it was finally confirmed, an explanatory interview recorded earlier in the day was finally released and the silence was broken: Messi did not leave the Camp Nou. He had decided to stay. Only he hadn’t decided anything of the kind; she had decided it for him and finally admitted defeat. The fact that he is still a Barcelona player will be described as a U-turn, but it is not. He changed his mind, they’ll say, but he didn’t. It is still there because it is stuck, there is no other reason. He will line up with Barcelona this season because they didn’t let him leave.
Will Messi accept that? And does it work when the coach has changed and Luis Suárez has left? Is it your “last dance”? Without Scottie Pippen, without Phil Jackson. Not Michael Jordan?
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Many footballers are forced to occupy positions and clubs that they do not want to be. The power of the player is often a myth; fate is not always at your feet. This time, even the most powerful player of all, who was accused of controlling the club, had to swallow. That is not so unusual; what it is, is saying it. Instead, the players lift a scarf, hold up a shirt, shake hands, and smile as if they meant it. Forced to make the most of it, most footballers will not admit that it is not what they wanted. But Messi is not the majority of players, not now.
When something like this happens, everyone pretends that everything is fine; they draw a line below and move on. Messi did not. This wasn’t Homer Simpson crawling back and starting from his old job after quitting. It wasn’t George Costanza who pretended he never gave up. Let’s never talk about this again. Actually, no, let’s go. And so spoke Messi. Boy did he speak. If you haven’t seen his interview with Ruben Uría yet, go ahead and do it now. It is extraordinary and that determines what comes next.
As if it wasn’t hard enough to fix this, finding a way back is harder now. Certainly staying doesn’t. There is still a long way to go, the healing to be done, if that is possible. Barcelona did not win it, it did not convince him: it pleased him.
This is not a victory, not yet. Not when Messi is so direct, so forceful, as to repeatedly insist that he is only here to avoid ending up on the court against the club. Not when he admits that he wanted – wants – to leave, that he is not happy, that he feels that the club has lied to him and that he does not believe in the project. What project? “For a long time, there has been no project or anything; they are doing a balancing act, plugging holes as they go,” Messi said, and he doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.
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He’s been burned too often, his faith is gone. This process has only made it worse, leaving bitterness and resentment. How do you get back after that? How do you get back on the pitch and become the player you were? Even more so if, deep down, you may no longer feel like the player you were: and Messi is older now, and he knows it. He spoke of spending his last years happily. And that did not mean in Barcelona.
But here it is, so what do you do now? How do you handle this? What do you say when Messi appears in San Joan Despí? What does Messi say? How does it work? No one was really ready for him to leave. But neither, having reached this point, were they really prepared for him to stay.
It’s not that Messi said he was leaving, it was that he was gone. Or he acted as he had. There was a coherence in his refusal to train: why would he do it if he was already away? Fernando Palomo expressed it very well: not so much he has stayed but he has gone and returned. Again, not because he wanted to, but because he was dragged back, against his will.
“I’ll give it my all,” Messi insisted, and he’s so competitive, so motivated and so talented that he probably will. Perhaps football is your refuge, a place to meet. Nowhere better than the country, perhaps. Maybe together the coaching staff and squad can build a team that isolates him from the club and its context, the crisis that surrounds it, the people he can hardly bear to look at. Perhaps they can forge unity against the main office in some way.
It is possible that anger can propel him, the determination to make a point, not to let the bastards win. “It hurts,” he said, “that people doubted my love for this club.” Maybe that can project it, boost it.
play1: 21’Everything Messi does will be analyzed now
With Lionel Messi in Barcelona, Sid Lowe says the pressure has increased for both him and the club.
Maybe, but something has changed in the last 10 days, and beyond. He had parted ways, only to find those chains that still held him back. Now, he has to play another season, at least, in Spain, one that he was not anticipating, much less one that he embraced. He talked about how the moment had come, how going was a means to rediscover “enthusiasm”, to seek “happiness”. He “needed” it, he said. It has been denied.
Ronald Koeman, Barcelona’s new manager, said he only wanted players who want to be there. Now he knows, and so does everyone else, that doesn’t include Messi.
Messi also didn’t exactly deliver a resounding endorsement of the new regime, no evidence that he believed things could be different now. You have seen things decline too fast, too far in the last five years, and you have come to believe that the road back is long. “I honestly don’t know what will happen now,” he said. “There is a new coach and a new idea. That’s good, but then you have to see how the team responds and if that is enough to compete or not.”
For the team to respond, Messi must. You have to convince him and integrate it, make it work with him and for him. And if you can’t, or don’t want to, you should. You need to seek complicity or authority, some way to motivate him. Do you build this, like the Bulls, in one last dance? A one-year farewell, ending at the top?
This is not the same Messi he was, and something had already broken within him. Emotionally, it cannot be the same. Even less now that those emotions have been publicly exposed, after everything that happened.
His authority is also different now, the way others look at him. Can you lead and will they carry on as they did before? Some companions had accepted that their departure was approaching; neither of them said anything about it, opting for silence. Some welcomed a change in culture, a new structure, different hierarchies. They have seen this whole sorry saga unfold and the damage it has done. Here’s a question, for example: can you still be a captain now?
Another even more basic question is: where does he play? Or, perhaps even simpler: play? Well of course you do, how can he not do it now after the fight they did to keep him? But is it really what they wanted? Is it what Koeman was working for? Wouldn’t you have preferred a clean start, a readjustment and lowering of expectations, the opportunity to go your own way?
Messi said that his departure would be good for everyone; it’s not impossible for Koeman to agree with that. He knows that his room for maneuver may be narrower now, and yet now it is he who will have to reinstate Messi.
Source: espn.co.uk
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