No mileage for Messi in move to UK
ACCORDING to Josep Bartomeu, the Barcelona president,new boss Ronald Koeman told him Lionel Messi will be “a key player for our new project”.
Well, no s***, Sherlock.
The mind boggles at what kind of guff the other candidates must have come up with if that’s the level of insight which landed the Dutchman the job.
Of course Messi will be an integral part of Barca’s next chapter, and of course the mercurial Argentinian will still be a Barca player when the transfer window closes, even if it is only natural that a winner like him should feel humiliated by the 8-2 trouncing Bayern Munich h gave them in the Champions League quarter-finals.
No doubt he and everyone else associated with the Catalan club will be licking their wounds s for some time to come.
But one result, however bad, isn’t going to cause Messi to turn his family’s life upside down, and any Manchester City fans wondering if maybe, just maybe, this is their chance to get him should probably think again.
I’m not even sure I’d want to see Messi in the Premier League now, anyway.
At the peak of his powers it would have been an absolute privilege to watch him destroy teams on a weekly basis.
But what if a move to a very different kind of football culture served only to make him look mortal after all. Frankly, none of us should want to see that.
Certainly, his international team-mate Gonzalo Higuain, the former Chelsea striker, wasn’t exactly pushing Messi our way when he replied to a question about him coming to the Premier League by saying: “Over there defenders kick the s*** out of you and nothing gets given.”
Others who have known Messi for a long time have never been convinced that a move to England would suit him.
It would have been more plausible if he’d arrived at City with Pep Guardiola in 2016, or followed him a year later.
But, really, what would he gain by moving to England now at 33, or next summer at 34, when neither City nor Manchester United, the only two teams here who could afford him, don’t look any closer to winning the Champions
Lea League than Barcelona?
Philosophy
Shortly before Guardiola rocked up at City, Josep Colomer, Barcelona’s former youth yo director and the man who played pla a big part in getting Messi (left) to the club as a 13-year-old, told this newspaper that he didn’t see the player moving to England.
“I think he will stay at Barcelona,” he said. “I don’t see Messi in another club, because already he has realised with Argentina it’s not the same Lionel Messi.
“Messi is Messi in the context of Barcelona. I’m not sure he is going to be the same Messi in another context. He has in his body the philosophy of Barcelona.”
Four years on, nothing has changed and Messi still has in his body the philosophy of Barcelona.
As Koeman, just like the rest of us, well knows.