I will stay, fumes Messi
Superstar makes a reluctant U-turn to remain at Barcelona but doesn’t mince words in criticising president Bartomeu
BARCELONA: Lionel Messi announced on Friday that he is staying put at Barcelona this season in order to avoid being drawn into a legal battle with the club. Speaking to Goal, Messi criticised the Barcelona management led by club president Josep Maria Bartomeu, who he accused of going back on an assurance of allowing him to leave at the end of the season.
“I thought and was sure that I was free to leave, the president always said that at the end of the season I could decide if I stayed or not. Now they cling 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 middle of this awful coronavirus and this disease altered all the season,” Messi told Goal in an interview.
“And this is the reason why I am going to continue in the club. Now I am going to continue in the club because the president told me that the only way to leave was to pay the €700 million clause, and that this is impossible.”
Messi had communicated his wish to terminate his contract with Barcelona via a burofax on August 25. The Argentine star’s contract contained a clause which allowed him to wriggle out of it with a year to go, i.e. in 2020. However, the clause had a June 10 cut-off date for the same.
Messi had interpreted the date as irrelevant as the season had extended to August but Barcelona remained adamant that any club willing to sign the player would have to pay his €700 million release clause as he did not have the authority to unilaterally terminate his contract.
“There was another way and it was to go to trial. I would never go to court against Barca because it is the club that I love, which gave me everything since I arrived. It is the club of my life, I have made my life here. Barca gave me everything and I gave it everything. I know that it never crossed my mind to take Barca to court,” Messi added.
The Argentine star said his decision to leave the club had also created emotion turmoil at home. “When I communicated my wish to leave to my wife and children, it was a brutal drama. The whole family began crying, my children did not want to leave Barcelona, nor did they want to change schools,” Messi said. “But I looked further afield and I want to compete at the highest level, win titles, compete in the Champions League. You can win or lose in it, because it is very difficult, but you have to compete. At least compete for it and let us not fall apart in Rome, Liverpool, Lisbon. All that led me to think about that decision that I wanted to carry out.”
Messi also described the state of affairs at Barcelona under Bartomeu as ‘a disaster’. He said that it was not just the 8-2 loss to Bayern Munich in the Champions League that convinced him make the decision of leaving Barcelona. “I believed that the club needed more young players, new players and I thought my time in Barcelona was over. I felt very sorry because I always said that I wanted to finish my career here. It was a very difficult year, I suffered a lot in training, in games and in the dressing room.
“Everything became very difficult for me and there came a time when I considered looking for new ambitions. It did not come because of the Champions League result against Bayern, no —I had been thinking about the decision for a long time,” he explained.
Messi’s sudden announcement came on the heels of his father and agent, Jorge, writing to La Liga president Javier Tebas dismissing their claim that the release clause still applied if his son wished to leave. “First, we do not know what contract you have analysed and on what grounds you conclude that there is a ‘release clause’ applicable in the case of him deciding to unilaterally end his contract from the end of the 2019-20 season,” he wrote in a letter published on social media.
“It is obvious that the compensation of 700 million euros, provided for in the previous clause... does not apply at all.”