The chats of former Barcelona executives: 'Messi sewer rat'

Harsh attacks and insults to Lionel Messi by the former managers of Barcelona.

This is what emerges from some conversations intercepted by the Catalan police and published by the Spanish newspaper Sport, dating back to the beginning of 2021, when the Argentine world champion was in the last months of his contract with the blaugrana.

The seven-time Ballon d'Or winner is labeled a "sewer rat", "nanohormonal" and is accused of having established an internal dictatorship within the club as regards transfer and renewal policies.

    The protagonists of the chats on WhatsApp are the former president Josep Maria Bartomeu, the former CEO Òscar Grau, the financial director Pancho Schroder, the director of Strategy and Innovation Javier Sobrino and other managers such as Jordi Moix, Oriol Tomàs and David Bellver.

The most 'direct' of all is Román Gómez Ponti, then head of Barça's legal services, from whose electronic devices the interceptions of the Iberian police derive.

    The exchanges of views on the group, in the reconstruction of Sport, ignite in a particular way on the day in which the newspaper El Mundo publishes the details of Messi's contract.

    It's January 2021 and the Bartomeu era has already ended a few months ago: "Barto, really, you can't be so kind to this sewer rat - Ponti's words to the former president - The club gave him everything and he dedicated himself to establishing a dictatorship of signings, transfers, renewals, sponsors... just for him."

    The former head of the Blaugrana legal services then reveals that Messi in 2020 would have pressured not to reduce his salary and that of his friend Suarez: "When things go wrong (the reference is to the year of the outbreak of the pandemic , ed) you get the mythical message: 'President, lower the salaries of the others, but don't touch Luis and me'. Let's

    hope it rots amid people's indifference,