MESSI’S SAD TEARS DRIED UP QUICKLY

THERE are players who transcend football – who become international icons recognised and admired even by those who would never sit down to watch a match.

For my parents’ generation it was Pele or Maradona, for mine it is Messi and Ronaldo. How strange then to see Lionel Messi giving a tearful farewell press conference to Barcelona, standing in the Camp Nou, a stadium and a team built on the back of successes his genius brought to the club.

There was something unfair about the rules forcing him to leave a club he’d been at for 21 years, wanted to stay at and who wanted to keep him too. A wave of sentiment immediately washed away when the Argentine popped up 24 hours later, beaming and talking up his excitement at playing for high-spending Paris Saint-Germain.

I would have loved to have seen Messi continue to test himself at the highest level, but I hope he enjoys the tens of millions of pounds he’s just trousered to play each week in a team that’s so packed with stars it barely needs to turn up to win trophies.