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Just ten days after Lionel Messi signaled his intention to end his 20-year association with Barcelona, he has been forced to stay.
In an exclusive interview with Goal, Messi confirmed that he will remain at the club for the 2020/21 campaign, but against his wishes.
The 33-year-old said that president Josep Maria Bartomeu broke his promise that he could leave at the end of the season after telling the club ‘all year’ that he wanted a new challenge.
Messi, who was the subject of Manchester City’s interest, submitted a transfer request late last month in which he expressed a desire to exercise a clause in his contract, allowing him to leave for free with immediate effect.
But Barça have maintained that the clause expired in June and was no longer valid, and have insisted that it will not be sold for anything less than its 700 million euro (625 million pound) buyout clause.
“I thought and was sure that I was free to go, the president always said that at the end of the season I could decide whether to stay or not,” said Messi.
“Now they hold on to the fact that I did not say it before June 10, when it turns out that on June 10 we were competing for La Liga in the midst of this terrible coronavirus and this disease was altered all season.
“And this is the reason why I will continue at the club. Now I am going to continue at the club because the president told me that the only way to leave was to pay the clause of 700 million euros (624 million pounds / 823 million dollars) and that that is impossible ”.
Unsurprisingly, City had no intention of activating the striker’s tears waiver clause. Thus, if Messi left, there was only one way out: take his beloved Barcelona to court.
Yet that was something the six-time Ballon d’Or winner never thought of doing. Therefore, you will stay in the club for at least another 10 months.
“There was another way and it was to go to court,” he explained. “I would never go to the pitch against Barça because it is the club that I love, which has given me everything since I arrived.
“It is the club of my life, I have made my life here.
“Barça gave me everything and I gave everything. I know it never crossed my mind to take Barça to court ”.
Describing the price that this ordeal has had on his family, Messi added: “Mateo is still young and doesn’t realize what it means to go somewhere else and make your life a few years elsewhere.
“Thiago, he’s older. He heard something on television, discovered something and asked.
“I didn’t want him to know anything about being forced to leave, having to live in a new school, or making new friends.
“He cried to me and said: ‘Let’s not go.’ I repeat that it was hard, really.
“It was understandable. It happened to me. It is very difficult to make a decision ”.
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