Messi announces he will stay as he doesn’t want to have a legal battle with Barca
Lionel Messi announced yesterday that he will stay with Barcelona for the upcoming season.
He said he wanted “to seek a new direction” in his career but would not “get into a legal dispute with the club”.
T h e d e c i s i o n e n d e d
a n impasse over his future that started when he told Barcelona ten days ago that he wanted to leave the club for free at the end of the season.
Barcelona wanted him to finish his contract that runs until June 2021. They claimed that the clause invoked by Messi to leave had expired on 10 June and said that he had to pay the buyout clause of € 700 million if he wanted to depart now.
“The president [ Josep Bartomeu] always said t hat at the end of the season I could decide if I wanted to go or if I wanted to stay and in the end he did not end up keeping his word,” Messi said. “The president always told me ‘ when the season is over, you decide if you stay or leave.’ But he never set a date.”
Messi had told the club about his intention to leave by sending a burofax, a certified document similar to a telegram.
“The burofax was simply to make it official that he was not following the rules, not to get into a fight because I did not want to fight with the club,” Messi said.
There had been no agreement when Messi’s father and Bartomeu met on Wednesday to discuss the player’s future.
“I’ll continue at Barcelona and my attitude won’t change, no matter how much I have wanted to go,” Messi said.