They argued at the time that they couldn’t afford to keep him. But Lionel Messi winning the World Cup now makes Barcelona’s decision to let him leave in the summer of 2021 look like one of the most short-sighted and costly calls in the club’s history.
He was finished, they had decided.
They could have moved the mannequins around in the shop window to make space for him for four more years. They could have sold, or spent less on incoming players (they would eventually give 34-year-old Robert Lewandowski a four-year contract), they could have accepted LaLiga’s investment deal with CVC which would have curried enough favour with the Spanish league to see him registered.
They chose not to. If only they had known that his greatest achievement was still ahead of him. Now as the gravy train pulls out of Qatar Central and heads back to Europe it will be stopping in Paris and not Barcelona.
They have been linked to re-signing him next summer after well connected Argentine journalist Veronica Brunati tweeted on his theoretical return. It’s certainly still the move his family favour.
But the word from his camp is that nothing regarding his future is yet set in stone and what’s clear is that the the gulf that opened up in the relationship between him and club president Joan Laporta would need to be closed considerably, wounds would have to heal for any deal to be struck.
Laporta won the last presidential election on the unspoken promise of being able to make Messi stay at the club. ‘He generates a third of the club’s income,’ he said in his defence when Spanish paper El Mundo leaked the details of Messi’s last contract.
‘I can only see him in a Barcelona shirt’ Laporta told Sportsmail just before the election at the start of 2021. ‘What upsets Leo most is that they [the previous board] lied to him. I am lucky enough to be able to say that he [Messi] has told me: “you have never lied to me. Always when you have proposed something to me, you have kept your word”.’
Messi no longer feels the same way after the club allowed him to leave despite convincing him that a deal had been done.
Back in August 2021 Messi texted his pal Sergio Aguero that he would see him at training on the Friday before the bombshell dropped. On the Wednesday his father and agent Jorge had boarded a plane bound for Barcelona on the understanding that it was to sign his son’s new contract. On the Thursday it was announced Messi was leaving.
