Messi against the past of the Barça

Lionel Messi in a FC Barcelona match at the Camp Nou, in Barcelona, ​​in November 2019.JOSEP LAGO / AFP

One of the most consistent myths of Spanish football is that Barcelona dismisses its figures badly.

As if historically he had had time to fire them.

Barcelona, ​​in reality, had Maradona at 22 and he left at 24, and had Ronaldo at 20 and left at 21. He did not lose two players, he lost two times.

Messi, however, debuted in Barcelona's first team at the age of 17 with the promise of being what he has become and has said goodbye to the club at 34. His goodbye was probably not the most effective management, probably it could have been left two years later and in another way, but if his farewell came to live up to the historical tradition of Barça he would have left with 22.

Messi is the first world figure to make Barcelona a period team, not a club to which, like Maradona's and Ronaldo's, look with admiration and curiosity for a year.

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It was an invention of Cruyff on the bench, a model that Guardiola perfected until the end, both of them as coaches.

Messi will never be able to measure up as a coach to what he was as a player because Messi will never again be close to anything compared to what he has been as a player.

Messi has been in Barcelona what no one has been able to be, among other reasons because the managers of Barcelona did not let them be.

Hurricane Messi has been so strong that it knocked down the antimadridista complex of their own and, more importantly, the capacity for self-destruction of the Barcelona directives, who get rid of everything that makes them happy to the point of getting rid of Cruyff and by Guardiola.

By surviving, Messi has even survived the Bartomeu years against his own will.

More information

• PSG, a kingdom for Messi

Leo Messi, for a couple of years, has been a nostalgic player; one of those men who, in their thirties, know that they will never be better at anything than they already were. One of those people who, while still young, understand that suddenly all the best is past. Messi will soon be what Sorrentino said about Maradona, a man with an unsolvable problem over time because he has lived his in the most unforgettable way possible: "The future does not exist for someone who is condemned to live in everyone's memory."

That's why leaving is hard, saying goodbye to someone who loves you is hard, not playing in your usual shirt again is hard. There is a very peculiar type of fan who says that money is not everything in life and, at the same time, that Messi, with so many millions, has no right to be sad; He is that kind of peculiar fan who when he says that money does not bring happiness, he really means the opposite: that what it does not give is sadness.

That the level of Messi, in short, has overcome the loss of speed is the last of his masterpieces, similar to the one executed by Cristiano when he noticed that nothing was lost on the band; players who before dying as gods prefer to play as the best of humans. PSG will take advantage of it and he will be a great Messi, but the best Messi has already passed at Barcelona, ​​and no one notices those goodbyes, the best ones. Because they are too painful to notice. Because neither Messi, at the limit, allowed anyone to notice it.