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BARCELONA (Reuters) – Lionel Messi has no plans to become a coach when he retires from the game and says he is more interested in being a soccer director than in working in the unforgiving world of soccer management.
The 33-year-old Argentine striker has about six months left on his contract with Barcelona and the football world is in suspense about whether he will stay at the club where he has spent the last 20 years or will seek a new challenge.
“I don’t see myself as a coach, maybe a sports director to hire the players I want or the club I am in needs,” Messi said in an interview with Spanish network La Sexta on Sunday.
Messi, a six-time world player of the year, will wait until the end of the season before making a decision, but said he would like to return to Barca, regardless of what he does next.
“I would like to tell the Barça fans that I am not sure if I will leave or not, but hypothetically speaking, I would like to leave in the best possible way,” he said.
“I would like to come back one day, I would like to return to the city, work at the club and contribute. I haven’t thought about it much but it will be something related to football, because that’s what I like.” and what I know “.
Messi, who moved to Barça at 13 and has become their all-time top scorer and most decorated player, acknowledged that he had hurt the club’s fans when he tried to leave last summer.
“The fans will cheer on their player while he’s at their club but they don’t forgive everything,” he said.
“My relationship with the club and the city is a love story. However it ends, it should not stain what I have experienced in my career.”
(Reporting by Richard Martin, edited by Ed Osmond)
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