It’s official: Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi will leave FC Barcelona.
The departure comes less than a month after Messi and Barcelona verbally agreed to a five-year deal, which included a substantial pay cut for Messi. His previous salary was around $32 million.
Lionel Messi is leaving
“Despite having reached an agreement between FC Barcelona and Leo Messi and with the clear intention of both parties to sign a new contract today, it cannot be formalized due to economic and structural obstacles (in Spanish LaLiga regulations),” FC Barcelona said in a statement. “Faced with this situation, Lionel Messi will not continue linked to FC Barcelona.”
Messi, one of the top players in soccer history, had expressed frustration with the Spanish soccer club last August, when he stated that he wanted to leave Barcelona. The 34-year-old ended his 21-year contract with the club in June and has remained a free agent July 1.
leo messi leaving barca
Messi’s Departure Is a Mess Everyone Could See Coming
F.C. Barcelona announced that league rules were forcing a breakup between Messi, the world’s greatest soccer player, and the club he has played for since he was 13. Could it really be that simple?
F.C. Barcelona cannot say it was not warned.
messi leaving barca
It is not yet a year since the last time a curt communiqué from Camp Nou declared that Lionel Messi’s long affair with the only club he has ever played for was over, and yet here we are again, the greatest player on this planet and also, according to all available evidence, any other, slipping from its grasp. To come so close to losing Messi once might be regarded as unfortunate. To do so twice looks an awful lot like carelessness.
Of course, the memory of the last journey down this road is sufficiently fresh, and it is still difficult to imagine Messi in any jersey other than Barcelona’s for a reason. Barcelona is more than his team; it is his home. His bond to it is not simply contractual; this is not just a business arrangement.
His children cried, last August, when he announced he would be leaving, when he filed the paperwork to complete his decree nisi, and that was enough to persuade him to stay. It looked for all the world as if he would go; his most ardent suitor, Manchester City, was waiting, pen in hand, for his signature. He stayed because he could not, when it came down to it, leave.
Perhaps it will work out that way this time, too. Perhaps there is some sliver of hope for Barcelona’s fans to cling to still: that it is an act of brinkmanship; that the club’s brief statement on its website declaring that it was the “clear intention of both parties” for Messi to remain, to see out his career in Catalunya, laying all of the blame for the breakdown of talks on the cruel regulations of La Liga, preventing Messi from being registered as a Barcelona player until the club has cut its swollen wage bill is a sign that this is just a play.
“Both parties deeply regret that the wishes of the player and the club will not be fulfilled,” it read. Perhaps Barcelona is putting the pressure on. Perhaps the authorities will buckle, offer the club a workaround, make an exception just this one time, as they have done all the other times that either Barcelona or its twin, repelling pole, Real Madrid, is in trouble. Perhaps Messi will stay, again.
Or perhaps not. The circumstances are undeniably different this time. Barcelona has announced that Messi will be leaving: that did not happen last year. It has published a video, the best bits of possibly the most remarkable career in history boiled down somehow into seven minutes — you could do seven hours and still only be scratching the surface — to thank him for his service. More important, Messi is not even technically, as he was last August, under contract. His deal at Barcelona expired at the end of June. He is a free agent, and he does not need a burofax to prove it.
It is this, no matter how it plays out, that is the most curious element of the whole farrago. Whether this is all a negotiating ploy with La Liga or not, there is no clear explanation as to how Barcelona found itself in a position where it was forced to use it.
Barcelona knew full well that Messi’s contract was running down. It had nearly a year, between the moment his family intervened to persuade him to stay last summer and June 30, to convince him that the club was his future, as well as his past. And it did not. It allowed discussions to drag on. It allowed the clock to tick. It must have known that, all of a sudden, he would count as a new signing. It must have known that, all of a sudden, it had a colossal problem on its hands.
There are two ways to read that. One, the most likely, is as the latest installment of the chaos and incompetence that have plagued Barcelona for years, that have allowed the club to squander a legacy that Messi did so much to enhance. For much of the last nine months, Barcelona existed in limbo, torn between an outgoing president and an interim one, distracted by an election campaign. The incumbent, Joan Laporta, has had only a few months in the position, and he has spent a surprising amount of that pledging fealty to a Super League project that is a monument to Real Madrid’s hubris. It is possible, probable even, that Messi’s contract got lost in all the politics, and that Barcelona just assumed it would be able to do what it wanted if required.
Or, alternatively, almost conspiratorially, it is not entirely unimaginable that this is the way it was always going to pan out. Or, at least, that this is how it had to end. Barcelona cannot afford to pay Messi. Not anymore. It certainly cannot afford to pay Messi and employ a squad fit to provide a supporting cast for his talent. But nor could it sell him. It could not refuse to extend his contract; the political fallout would be too devastating. He could not walk away, not of his own volition, not having toyed with the idea so publicly once before.
This way, everyone gets what is needed: Barcelona can start again, financially, if not emotionally. Messi gets to play for Manchester City or Paris St.-Germain — or, at an outside chance, Chelsea — and have the kind of twilight his career more than deserves. And nobody has to take the blame because all of that can be pinned on La Liga and its oppressive insistence on proper financial governance.
It is a compelling theory, if not necessarily one that survives the barest scrutiny. Barcelona had been planning to unveil Messi, re-signed and resealed, later this month. It had added one of his closest friends, Sergio Agüero, to its squad, apparently at his insistence, this summer. These are the actions of a club flailing around to make things work, not the 4D chess moves of some Machiavellian puppet master.
Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same. For years, Barcelona has been troubled by the presence of so many tourists in the towering stands of Camp Nou at its league games. Occasional visitors tend not to sing, you see. They are there to observe the atmosphere, not to generate it. At one point, before the pandemic, the club created a new singing section to help improve the situation, to inject a little passion and authenticity into what had become a passive experience, an audience rather than a crowd.
Perhaps, in time, it will come to miss those sorts of problems. Many of them, after all, had been drawn to Barcelona by Messi. Many — not all, but many — had made their pilgrimage to see him as much as the team that existed around him because they knew if he was playing, the trip and the cost would be worth it. There was no game that his presence did not elevate, no fixture that he did not garnish with something exceptional. The quiet of the stands was the quiet of anticipation, as though it would be rude to disturb a master at work.
It will be quiet somewhere else now, and in the absence of that quiet there will, in Barcelona, be only the most crushing silence. And no matter what excuses the club tries to peddle, no matter how many fingers it points, it will have only itself to blame.
Lionel Messi
Lionel “Leo” Andrés Messi[4][note 1] (Spanish pronunciation: [ljoˈnel anˈdɾes ˈmesi] (About this soundlisten); born 24 June 1987) is an Argentine professional footballer who plays for and captains the Argentina national team. Often considered the best player in the world and widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Messi has won a record six Ballon d’Or awards,[note 2] a record six European Golden Shoes, and in 2020 was named to the Ballon d’Or Dream Team. Until leaving the club in 2021,[10] he spent his entire professional career with Barcelona, where he won a club-record 34 trophies, including ten La Liga titles, seven Copa del Rey titles and four UEFA Champions Leagues. A prolific goalscorer and creative playmaker, Messi holds the records for most goals in La Liga (474), a La Liga and European league season (50), most hat-tricks in La Liga (36) and the UEFA Champions League (8), and most assists in La Liga (192), a La Liga and European league season (21)[11] and the Copa América (17). He has scored over 750 senior career goals for club and country, and has the most goals ever by a player for a single club.
Born and raised in central Argentina, Messi relocated to Spain to join Barcelona at age 13, for whom he made his competitive debut aged 17 in October 2004. He established himself as an integral player for the club within the next three years, and in his first uninterrupted season in 2008–09 he helped Barcelona achieve the first treble in Spanish football; that year, aged 22, Messi won his first Ballon d’Or. Three successful seasons followed, with Messi winning four consecutive Ballons d’Or, making him the first player to win the award four times and in a row.[12] During the 2011–12 season, he set the La Liga and European records for most goals scored in a single season, while establishing himself as Barcelona’s all-time top scorer. The following two seasons, Messi finished second for the Ballon d’Or behind Cristiano Ronaldo (his perceived career rival), before regaining his best form during the 2014–15 campaign, becoming the all-time top scorer in La Liga and leading Barcelona to a historic second treble, after which he was awarded a fifth Ballon d’Or in 2015. Messi assumed captaincy of Barcelona in 2018, and in 2019 he won a record sixth Ballon d’Or.