Lionel Messi, the greatest footballer to ever lace up a pair of boots, is leaving FC Barcelona. And the initial shock is now wearing off. Not riding off into the sunset, but saying that he wants to leave posthaste and has the clause in his contract to back up his wishes.
The captain of Barcelona hasn’t spoken to the fans since the 8-2 disaster against Bayern Munich. Doing so at this point would hurt his desire to not be the captain of the club and would from a public relations perspective still tie him to the club. For him to leave now, it’s got to be clean break – no public emotion, no heartwarming goodbye.
As long as this saga drags on, the future of the club remains up in the air. A lot of money that wasn’t already lost to the pandemic will vanish once some sponsors follow Messi and his global marketability out the door. The only chance to land on four paws to start the post-Messi era is to make sure that some money is coming back to the club in this negotiation. Unfortunately, this negotiation is being headed up by Josep Bartomeu, a man without a future at the club as well.
As the vote of no confidence picks up steam and votes are collected to try to accelerate a changing of the guard, the current guard is having the conversations that could define the club for a decade. Jorge Messi is someone that the Barcelona brass knows well and that might actually make the conversations harder. Things can get awful personal, awful quickly. Mixing family and business means that you should be able to trust the people that represent you, but it also means that everybody already knows each other after two decades in the same place.
In the latest The Barcelona Podcast, Francesc and I spoke about the reasons why Bartomeu is blocking Messi’s exit from Barcelona and the role that the Argentina star has in this whole saga and how the situation could have ended differently.
Listen to The Barcelona Podcast now:
It seems that the first meeting between Messi Sr. and Bartomeu went exactly as was expected. The best outcome for FC Barcelona is for Bartomeu to be kind of right and the clause that allows Messi to leave for free to have already expires. This would mean that Messi is still under contract until 2021 and he has a €700 million release clause.
However, holding Messi hostage at the club and asserting that he can sit out the year and leave for free next summer is ludicrous. Messi does deserve better than that. He does deserve to leave, but what’s best for the club is that he is sold for a negotiated fee.
I think that is ultimately the way forward – the other option is court – but this meeting was just the first session where both parties were expected to stick by the opposite ends of the argument. Just the latest chapter in a very sad tale of FC Barcelona in 2020.
Dan Hilton is an American journalist, broadcaster, and current Editor-in-Chief of BarcaBlog. Extensive work as a play-by-play broadcaster, producer behind the scenes, and quite average player in his younger years has given him a well-rounded and informative perspective on the sport. Alongside BarcaBlog founder Francesc, Dan started The Barcelona Podcast in 2017.
