Lionel Messi, refreshed after his Copa América trophy win and hanging out in Ibiza with his buddy Luis Suárez, will return to FC Barcelona for preseason this week. He’s set to go through his testing on Monday and Tuesday, individually train alongside Emerson and Sergio Agüero, and then head to Germany on Friday to join up with the squad. The little problem with all of that? He’s still a free agent and doesn’t have a new contract yet. As a reminder, Lionel Messi has not been a player for FC Barcelona since June 30th.
Okay, so technically he’s still a Barça player because he hasn’t signed for any other team either, and all indications are that he’ll return as if he never “left”. If the contract he eventually signs is the reported two years plus plenty of other options down the line, he could wind up playing more than 1,000 matches for the club. Gianluigi Buffon has played more than 1,000 matches overall (a number he reached with Italy back in 2017), but only Rogério Ceni with his 1,152 appearances for São Paolo is credited for hitting the one thousand mark with one club. Ryan Giggs with 963 for Manchester United and Paolo Maldini’s 902 for AC Milan are the next closest. No disrespect to the former goalkeeper Ceni, who retired in 2015 in his 40s, but Messi reaching 1,000 would feel a lot more like the record.
Records aside, the 34-year-old wants to continue on at FC Barcelona; and the club will do everything within their power to make that happen. While the club desperately works on sending a few players away, it’s possible that Messi signs a contract for an undisclosed amount of money just to make sure he’s eligible to be registered for La Liga in the next few weeks. This could even be done this week so that he can feature in the Gamper Trophy against Juventus next Sunday.
Not being registered hasn’t stopped Memphis Depay from featuring in the preseason, and Messi would be no different. And it’s long been assumed that Javier Tebas and the La Liga bigwigs will eventually help Barcelona find a way to get Lionel Messi back into their squad prior to the Spanish league getting underway. There are new TV contracts and broadcast partners expecting to see the Argentine in that first match against Real Sociedad, and for a player that reportedly costs Barcelona 8% of their income but helps bring in more than 30% of it, getting him on the field for that one is paramount. In the United States, Barça’s La Liga opener will take place on ABC, thereby broadcasting the Spanish league to the largest North American audience they’ve ever had.
This will also affect the way that the team is viewed in the earliest part of the season. Despite finishing seven points behind champions Atletico Madrid and five back of Real Madrid, most oddsmakers have Barcelona as the outright favorite to win next year’s title, with their odds ranging from +125 to +150. In a season of transition last year, they still generated league highs in expected goals and goal differential. It’s sensible to expect not only improvement, but also better luck, in year-two under Ronald Koeman.
The solution to both Messi’s contract situation and the registration problem is one that should be found in the coming weeks, if not days. Yet due to the lack of information that the general public has about the details of Barcelona’s financial maneuvers, it’s hard for those outside the club to surmise how that solution comes to be.
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
