Messi in the Time of Covid

There was much tear-jerking comment on an Argentine radio earlier today about the love Messi feels for Barcelona, and the sadness he feels for his friend and neighbour Luis Suarez who has been told he is surplus to requirements by new coach Ronald Koeman.

Appearing on the same programme I felt compelled to introduce a touch of reality on the Messi/FC Barcelona saga. The current story involving Messi and Barcelona   is one of egos, politics and greed, a less than edifying  example for  a world suffering dislocation, deprivation, suffering and death-and yet ready and willing to be uplifted.

This is not an uplifting story but a telling one about what happens when football ceases to be a game to be enjoyed.  At the weekend with most of Spain trying to make sense of the continuing upward curve in Covid infections, the Messi camp raised the stakes in its own battle with the club, with the player refusing to turn up to train, or be tested as is required of all players in La Liga. There is a lot of bad blood.

La Liga represented by its president Javier Tebas pronounced itself on the side of the club’s insistence that the player could not leave on a few transfer  and that the 700 million euros ‘escape’ clause was still active.

Both sides could be heading for an eventual compromise which will see the player being transferred for a record sum of between 110-200 million euros, with Manchester City the most likely buyer, or so I am told by sources  in Barcelona.

Amid reports that Messi has asked for a meeting with the club this coming week to reiterate his desire that he wants to leave,both sides  I understand are anxious to avert the current deadlock unravelling into a potentially protracted legal battle through the Spanish courts.

It is very unlikely that any club would sign up to a transfer deal while the outcome and potential financial consequences of such legal action remaining uncertain.  And if Messi doesn’t play, no one wins in this saga, beginning with those who have loved  to watch him at his most talented with the ball, when he is poetry in motion.

While FC Barcelona appear resigned to the possibility of Messi leaving, they would like to defuse the growing hostility of fans by reaching an outcome that might be acceptable  to  both sides.A poll in the main Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia at the weekend showed 80 per cent of fans blamed the club and not the player for the current crisis.

Of the clubs that might be able to afford Messi, Manchester City seems to remain the most likely fit in a transfer deal given the successful years that the English club’s coach Pep Guardiola’s had managing the young Messi at Barca between 2008 and 2012.

Messi’s good friend Sergio Aguero who still has a year to go on his contract with Man City, would certainly welcome his arrival. Teaming the two up, along with the talented Belgium midfielder Kevin De Bruyne in support would be attractive in football terms, and a boost to the Premier League as tries to raise spirits and revenue.

PSG, the other club which has been most in the speculative frame since the Messi story broke, is seen as less of a possibility, with Messi’s former Barca colleague Neymar in a team that has two other talented and expensive forwards Mauro Icardi, and the French man Mbappe.

The third option of course- that Messi simply thinks again and decides that he wants to stay at FC Barcelona- is only a very remote possibility right now .

Barca has suffered from an over dependency on a Messi that at the age of 33 is no longer in his prime, having lost pace and agility, and surrounded by  other less talented players  and tired and underperforming veterans. This was much in evidence in Barca’s humiliating 2-8 defeat at the hands of a much fitter and more motivated Bayern Munich in the Champion’s League semi-final.

While the defeat accelerated a sense of crisis, the current debacle has been festering for a while with Messi, a succession of managers, sporting directors and club presidents wrestling over money, and for control over who plays and how.

Its finances negatively affected by the impact on revenues during the pandemic, Barca could use the money from a Messi transfer to spend on new players while bringing in some young talent from the youth academy like in the Golden years.

FC Barcelona President Bartomeu would prefer not like to go down in history as the man not only responsible for losing the best player in the club’s history but also ending on very bad terms with him.

His hope is that a deal can be struck so that Messi’s relations with Barca as an institution are not irrevocably broken and that the Argentine can still consider that in Catalonia he has a home to return   to with his family at some future date as an honoured adopted son and legend.

With or without Messi, FC Barcelona’s new coach Koeman has his work cut out if he is to rescue the club from the low point to which it has fallen in performance and results.

It is likely to take more than one season to recover the quality and competitive edge FC Barcelona has lost since it last won the Champion’s League in 2014-2015.

At present Messi’s representatives are playing hard ball, having seemingly calculated that staying at Barca is not worth it in in commercial terms for the player, even if he owes a great deal in personal and image terms to the club and city to which he has been attached to for the last two decades, since signing his first contract  in 2001.

You could say that Messi’s current salary of   over 50m euros net – double if taxes are counted- is not exactly slave money, even for a player that has come to believe he has earned the right to do and say what he pleases.

As Messi’s fellow countryman Jorge Valdano suggested in his excellent   football column for the Spanish newspaper El Pais on saturday, “Messi is leaving because at the age of 33 he can no longer redeem Barca alone, and because in this Barca, he can no longer go on being Messi.”