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So now we know. Lionel Messi is for stay in Barcelona, at least for one more season.
In the short term, it is a victory for the club and its managers in a highly publicized showdown between them and the Argentine genius.
But although Barcelona has won this battle, there is no guarantee that they will end up winning the war, or even that this victory will not turn out to be Pyrrhic.
So why did Messi decide to stay?
In the end, Messi stays because he feels that he has no other option and that he has been deceived by the president of the club, Josep Maria Bartomeu, of whom he says he always assured him that if he was still unhappy with the state of things at the end of the season, it could. leave the club as the contract suggested.
Messi may stay, but this is a man who wants to leave. The spirit of his contract said he could decide what he wanted to do at the end of the season. The contract letter said he had to inform the club before June 10.
On June 10, the coronavirus meant that the last phase of the season had not even started. Barcelona had, at that time, a two-point lead at the top of the league with 11 games to go and still a lot in the Champions League, with the second leg of the round of 16 to play. This is hardly the time to deliver your notice.
At the time, Messi was comforted by the verbal assurances he had received from the president that at the end of the season he could decide whether he wanted to stay or leave.
Simply put, Messi thought he had a verbal agreement, but Bartomeu saw his chance and was not about to be remembered as the president who let Messi go.
At Goal interview issued on Friday, Messi has been unequivocal about it. The reason, well, the main one, he will stay one more season is that he has been told that the only way he can leave is by paying the release clause of 700 million euros that the club claims is still in his contract. Or go to court. And he was not going to go to the court with the club he loves.
That is something that will not happen.
Messi’s legal team has wanted to point out to their client that they believe he had more than a fair chance of winning the argument in a court of law, that, as his father and agent Jorge Messi said in a letter to La Liga, the contract says there is no release clause of € 700 million applicable from the end of last season.
But Messi was never going to go the legal way against the club that had given him everything and to whom he has given everything. He made it quite clear in his interview that it never crossed his mind to take Barcelona to court.
So … how did we get here?
For a long time, Messi had become increasingly disillusioned with what he perceived as a lack of project at the Camp Nou, as he himself suggests in the interview.
At 33 he felt in his heart that this was a club upside down. The weaknesses were masked, mainly by him, placing plasters on the open wounds.
Messi is, always has been and always will be a winner. Losing has never been very good for him. He also knows that he is now in the twilight of what has been a stellar race and wants to finish it as he always lived it: as a winner.
It had become absolutely obvious to him that this would not happen if he stayed at Barcelona, as much as he wanted to finish his career with them.
He had lost patience with the decision makers at the club, mostly Bartomeu, and with that he also lost the passion he needs to be the best he can be.
Above all, Messi was not having fun and did not hide the fact from the club’s hierarchy. Don’t worry, they told him, if you feel that way at the end of the season, you can go.
When it became clear that the club was not listening to his protests, he finally decided after leaving the Champions League to officially announce by burofax that he was leaving the club, and that as far as he was concerned his contract allowed him to leave on a free transfer.
Suggestions to deliver your notice by certified delivery were disrespectful and far from the truth. The burofax was sent to make what it wanted to do official because the president did not take what he was saying seriously.
All year he had been telling the president that he wanted to go, as he has admitted in the interview. If he hadn’t sent it, nothing would have happened and it would have seemed like he was prepared to stay another year.
What happens now?
Having convinced his family to move (not without tears as they envisioned a life away from what they love and in the place they will return to if he ends up moving at some point), Messi will now stay. He has said that his attitude will not change and, although he has tried to leave, he will continue to do his best.
What you will find is a club in transition, although with players like Antoine Griezmann, Ansu Fati, Ousmane Dembele, Marc-Andre Ter Stegen, Frenkie de Jong and Miralem Pjanic on the squad, this is still a very good team.
Maybe, just maybe, new coach Ronald Koeman can convince Messi that he’s in the right club, playing the right way, making the right breakthroughs and between them they can turn things around, move mountains, succeed and, of course, Suddenly all the unhappiness that is the feeling will disappear.
But I’m not sure we’ve heard the end of this saga yet.
Koeman and Barcelona are going to have to get used to working with a player who claims that he has been deceived by the club president, a player who has made it very clear that he wants to leave and a player who has openly stated that he is not happy.
Make no mistake, Barcelona has a player in the club who does not want to be there because of the way the club is run and by whom it runs.
Bartomeu, who would leave office in March before the elections, got his wish not to be the president who lost Messi, but was his schedule favored over that of the club?
Expected revenue this season would drop to perhaps € 700 million, a big deduction from last season’s € 1 billion, and a player will take more than € 100 million of that.
Messi himself said that his departure would have been good for a club that needed fresh blood (and more solid finances). For him. For everyone.
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