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Barça usually have night schedules for La Liga matches at the Camp Nou. Players leave the stadium around midnight to go home. Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez usually share a car, alternating driving between them.
The couple does everything together. They are neighbors of Castelldefels, a quiet coastal town 24 kilometers from the city of Barcelona. Their houses are located on a hillside against the backdrop of the mountainous Garraf National Park. Their children go to school together. His wives are partners in a shoe store.
Last week, Messi received a call, as team captain, to meet with Ronald Koeman, Barcelona’s new manager. Messi was out of town, on vacation with Suarez and their families at one of Messi’s vacation homes in the Pyrenees.
Messi got into his car and drove the two hours back to Barcelona to hear what Koeman had to say. He didn’t much like what he had to hear. Koeman is a club legend, “the Wembley hero”, for scoring the winning goal that gave Barça their first European Cup in 1992.
Koeman has moved in to reform an aging squad – the team beat Bayern Munich 8-2 in the Champions League quarterfinals with an average age of 30 – and to dismantle a powerful dressing room. Players like Messi, Suárez, Jordi Alba, Arturo Vidal or Gerard Piqué operate in a power vacuum left by a weak and clumsy president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, whose only cunning is the instinct for self-preservation.
Koeman is carrying out Bartomeu’s orders. The people of Barcelona were amazed at the speed at which Koeman got to work. Last Monday, he called Suárez to tell him that he should leave the club. Their conversation lasted a minute. One after another, Koeman telephoned players with the same news, including Ivan Rakitic, the man who scored Barcelona’s first goal in the 2015 Champions League final, Samuel Umtiti and Vidal, another close friend of Messi.
Koeman’s deal with Suárez, which ended the career of the third top scorer in Barca history with a phone call, tipped the balance in Messi’s mind. The next day, Messi sent a burofax to the club announcing that he wanted to leave the club. The earth quaked. The Madrid press has been wallowing in the disgrace of Barça. “Adiós by burofax” he shouted on Wednesday morning on the front page of the Madrid sports newspaper Diario AS.
Messi’s decision to leave the club has not happened overnight. He has been at odds with Bartomeu for years. In 2017, when Messi renewed his contract until 2021, he dragged his feet for five months before agreeing to do a photoshoot with the president to confirm the contract renewal. Last year it emerged that Messi included a curious contractual clause, which allowed him to leave the club at the end of each season on a free transfer if he wanted.
Lionel Messi has been at odds with Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu for years. Photograph: Lluis Gene / AFP via Getty Images
Messi has despaired of Bartomeu’s failed attempts to regenerate the team. Bartomeu has gone through five sporting directors since 2015, as transfer after transfer, including Arda Turan, André Gomes and Ousmane Dembélé, have expired at the register.
Messi wanted Bartomeu to sign Neymar Jr again last summer from Paris Saint-Germain. Following last year’s shameful 4-0 defeat to Liverpool in the Champions League semi-final, Bartomeu denied Messi signing Antoine Griezmann. It later emerged that Bartomeu and Griezmann had reached an agreement two months earlier (which cost the club a € 15 million settlement payment to Atlético de Madrid for using one of their players). Bartomeu’s bet on Griezmann, who has had trouble adjusting at the club because Messi plays in his position, meant that the club had no money to buy Neymar Jr.
Bartomeu fired his coach Ernesto Valverde in January, while Barça led the standings, against Messi’s wishes. Valverde’s successor, Quique Setien, 61, had never managed a team in the Champions League before. I was lost at sea. Messi did not believe in him from day one. Players thought their training exercises were silly and too complicated. Both Messi and Suárez criticized him in press interviews.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, Bartomeu and his board led players to a corner, pressuring them through press leaks to accept a pay cut. Messi was furious and issued a statement on social media confirming that the team would cut their salaries and, surpassing the president, would also cover the lost salaries of club staff. Suarez’s cruel treatment was the last straw.
Messi’s transfer request has created an unholy mess, coming at a time when the club is already rickety and at the mercy of a deeply ingrained culture of player power. When Pep Guardiola left as coach in 2012, he cited fatigue and the fear that staying longer would destroy relationships with several of his players, as he struggled to cope with his indiscretions such as Dani Alves returning late. of Christmas. Holidays.
Five years later, Luis Enrique, another coach who won the treble, left for similar reasons. When Koeman was revealed last week as coach, Luis Enrique, who now heads Spain’s national team, warned that he will face a difficult task “managing the dressing room.”
Players, who are the highest-paid sports team in the world, according to Sporting Intelligence, are a law unto themselves. During the winter, Arthur (who has been sold to Juventus) injured his groin while snowboarding. Piqué admitted in an El País interview that he only slept four or five hours a night because he was consumed with renewing the Davis Cup tennis tournament, one of several off-field business interests.
Last summer, when the club rushed to buy back Neymar Jr, the club’s senior players, including Messi, Piqué and Suárez, proposed delaying the payment of his salary to partially fund the deal. Can you imagine when Alex Ferguson was manager of Manchester United proposing to his players (above his head) that they would help pay for David Beckham’s return to the club? This is not how football clubs should be run.
Messi wanted Barcelona to sign Neymar Jr again last summer from Paris Saint-Germain. Photograph: Quique García / AFP via Getty Images
Bartomeu has been a disaster. His only policy has been to keep Messi happy. In this, he has failed monumentally, even though he has thrown money at Messi. The Argentine’s salary is 106 million euros a year, according to Football Leaks, which far exceeds the salaries of Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar Jr.
It is an extravagance that is part of the worrying economic situation in Barcelona. He already spends 69 percent of his income on player salaries, compared to, say, 52 percent at Real Madrid. Last season he lost 300 million euros to the pandemic. He is expected to drop 30 percent of his income next season. Barcelona simply don’t have the money to rejuvenate their squad. First you need to sell players.
Regardless, there is no guarantee that a Messi forward substitute like Lautaro Martínez, who is chased by the club, will. Look what happened when Real Madrid sold Cristiano Ronaldo. His successor, Eden Hazard, has scored a goal since joining last summer; Ronaldo scored 450 goals in nine seasons.
However, Messi’s departure could save Bartomeu and his directors from being personally liable for the debts accumulated during his regime. Bartomeu is desperate to balance his accounts with the club in the last two transfer windows before his term ends next March. Taking Messi’s salary off the books and bringing in, say, a € 120 million transfer fee to save face could get him out of a bind. However, it would be a short-term solution.
Barça has not always been a great club; Messi has made him one. Between 1960 and 1990, Barcelona won the League twice. Since making his league debut in 2004, Messi has won 10 league titles. Before Messi, Barça won only one European Cup. Messi has added four to the trophy cabinet. He has scored 634 goals for the club, 400 more than the previous record, César, a forward who emerged from the ashes of the Spanish Civil War.
Clubs go up and down. Milan has disappeared as a force in Europe. Manchester United have not competed for the English Premier League since Ferguson left in 2013. Without Messi, and the hysterical consequences of his departure will precipitate, possibly along the lines of the five-year, trophy-less spiral that led to the passing of Luís Figo. to Real Madrid in 2000 – means that Barça faces an uncertain future.
Barcelona fans are hurt by the way Messi has decided to leave. The complaints you have do not justify ending a 20-year relationship with the club by sending a legal letter. It’s deeply upsetting to fans that arguably the greatest player in history is going out the back door. His last act was the most embarrassing defeat in club history.
If Messi’s transfer goes ahead, as seems inevitable, one day he will be welcomed back to the city. It will be forgiven. That is not the fate that awaits Bartomeu. For helping to expel Messi from the club, he will always have to lower his head in shame.
Lionel Messi celebrates after scoring a goal in his early years at Barcelona. Photograph: Lluis Gene / AFP via Getty Images
Messi’s battles with Barça
2013: Javier Faus, Barcelona’s vice president of finance, complains in a radio interview about Messi’s contract renewal: “I don’t know why we have to renew it again. We don’t have to submit an upgrade to their contract every six months. ” Messi responds: “Señor Faus is a person who knows nothing about football. Barcelona is one of the biggest clubs in the world and deserves [be managed] by the best leaders. . . neither I nor anyone in my entourage asked for an increase or renewal, and he knows it very well ”. When Faus left the club in 2015, he admitted: “Messi was right. I have no idea about football ”.
2016: Messi is punished with a suspended sentence of 21 months for tax evasion (later reduced to a fine of 252,000 euros). He wants to leave Barça (and Spain) out of spite, with his sights set on a 150 million euro transfer to Manchester City. Ironically, his friend and teammate Luis Suárez dissuades him.
2020: Eric Abidal, Barça sports director and Messi’s former teammate, suggests in an interview with a newspaper that Barça players were responsible for the dismissal of coach Ernesto Valverde. Within minutes of posting the article online, Messi responded on social media. In red ink, he circled Abidal’s claim that many of the players weren’t satisfied with Valverde and weren’t working hard. He called Abidal to give names, if he wasn’t “dirtying” Messi’s name by implication.
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