Hours and hours of television in Argentina, in France, in Qatar and in any corner of the world that comes to mind.
Centimeters and more centimeters in newspapers and magazines.
Bytes and more bytes on portals and social networks.
Everyone has been talking about the future of Lionel Messi
for a long time and even more so now after the resounding elimination, labeled failure, by Paris Saint Germain in the round of 16 of the Champions League.
And all that is said, written, posted and debated seems to be in vain.
Perhaps it will be beneficial for devotees of minute by minute and ratings spikes.
Maybe some newspaper will sell a handful more with an impact cover.
But for now, Messi's future contains only one certainty:
He has a contract with PSG until June 30 and the French club is the only one with which he has an open negotiation.
The rest are pure speculation.
Of course,
the slip and fall in a rainy Bavaria altered that scenario
.
It is that these days not only the continuity of Messi will be in discussion, but the Qatari owners will be forced to rethink a sports project that season after season hits an iceberg again and again.
PSG, which from now until June will only play Ligue 1, is like
a Titanic in a loop
.
All dented.
Sunken.
And Messi, like Kylian Mbappé and Neymar -will they stay?-, are some of the pieces that were disembodied after the 0-3 aggregate against the ever-compliant Bayern Munich.
That is what will be discussed in the coming days when Jorge Messi, father and representative of the best player in the last World Cup, meets again with the bosses of PSG.
There was already a meeting, weeks ago, in which the negotiations, those that seemed very advanced just after Qatar 2022, were on standby.
Especially since his interlocutors could not answer what the club's 2023-2024 plan was.
You had to cross the Rubicon
- go to Bayern Munich - to continue talking.
The die was thrown and, unlike Julius Caesar in the conquest of Gaul, fortune did not fall on the side of the Parisians.
Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé could not avoid the elimination of PSG.
That pending talk is expected to occur shortly.
But it will not be the only conversation that Nasser Al Khelaïfi, the club's patron, and company will have ahead of them.
Because they must design a totally new project from here on out.
Surely the Frenchman Christophe Galtier will no longer be there as coach
.
And
it is very possible that the cycle of the Portuguese Luis Campos, sports director, is also on the way to its conclusion
.
The first because he never found the recipe to put together a balanced team around Messi, Neymar and Mbappé.
He never played well.
He didn't even do better than in Mauricio Pochettino's turbulent times as manager.
And the second because, clearly, he did not put together a competitive squad with a replacement.
The Mbappé + 10 project, with fewer Argentines in the dressing room, was shipwrecked.
Consequently, without knowing who will be in charge of rearming the sport or having any idea about how the team will be structured for the next season, it is difficult to establish whether or not Messi will continue in the team - there is talk, hastily, of the arrivals of Bernardo Silva, Gonçalo Ramos and Victor Osimhen-.
He weighs both the sports project and the need to play in a team that gives the stature as well as the contractual and salary details.
Jorge Messi will talk about all this with his interlocutors when he has an audience again in the Parque de los Príncipes.
Because the concrete thing, it is insisted, is that for the moment
Leo only has PSG on the horizon
.
The only thing that unites him with Barcelona, beyond the rapprochement that has been discussed in the last few hours - for a tribute match? - Is his house in Casteldefels and his old friends.
A public apology from Joan Laporta, the president who kicked him out and who made him cry like never before in his life, should appear first, to begin to retrace the path of a probable return.
And Laporta is not the only problem.
It is not even the most complex to solve.
It is that
the Catalan club must reduce some 200 million euros of salary mass
and that seems incompatible with the return of Messi.
Messi, crestfallen, in Munich.
Photo: EFE
The United States seems to be as far away, for now, as that chimera-shaped dream called Newell's and a Rosario on fire.
There is not, at least they are not known, flirting with some other giant in Europe.
For this reason, PSG has priority.
And the fierce criticism that was heard in the last hours does not even drive him away.
"We don't want Messi. He doesn't want to invest in this club! I saw his statement where he said 'I'm fine, acclimated' but what are you acclimated to? Why did you score 18 goals or 16 assists this year against Angers and Clermont?
But in the games that matter, he disappears completely!
Which is a joke, because we've seen his games in the World Cup" , bellowed
Jérôme Rothen
, a former footballer who emerged in Monaco and played
in the last few hours.
psg.
In his role as a commentator on RMC Sport, Rothen believes -wrongly- that Messi only stays for the millions he earns at the club:
"Only PSG could give him this salary and, of course, PSG fell on both feet because they thought that Messi was going to make us win.
But he does not.
He won't make us win anything.
If tomorrow I find out that he extends his contract, I will no longer go to the Parque de los Príncipes.
These are real problems for PSG because they block signings because the payroll is huge because of these players."
It is not the first time that Rothen has attacked Messi.
“
Messi's extension sucks, even in terms of the squad
.
Managing MNM is complicated.
Then there is the issue of payroll.
We saw PSG blocked by the Financial Fair Play.
Because the payroll has skyrocketed.
Now he has the opportunity to save a large sum of money since Messi's salary is substantial.
And reinforce the squad”
, he had said in February.
In the same vein are other ex-soccer players who have become serial commentators such as Bixente Lizarazu and David Ginola.
Messi and an intruder who wanted to greet him in Munich.
Photo: Reuters.
This Thursday, RCM, the chain where Rothen works, launched that PSG would no longer be convinced to negotiate Messi's renewal.
It was the only outlet that published it.
Not even
L'Equipe
, who stoned him on Wednesday with another three score -Mbappé took the same rating and the wandering Marco Verratti received a two-, was encouraged to do so.
Nor
Le Parisien
, the other medium that follows the day-to-day life of the club in detail.
It is insisted:
criticism clearly occupies a secondary place.
Because Paris, beyond the fact that we have to see how the team is rebuilt and what it can offer them so that the chance of being champion of that Champions League that became elusive - they have not won it since 2015 - continues to live, it is a place in which his family has already adapted.
Both the boys with the school and
Antonela Roccuzzo
, her partner, in her role as influencer of different brands on social networks.
Another move would involve moving everything.
For this reason,
PSG continues to be
Messi's
plan A, B and C.
And that scenario does not change for the moment.
At least until the meeting between his father and the Qataris doesn't happen.
Will it be before Leo returns to Argentina to play with the National Team?
Only after that talk will he be able to start playing -speculate- with the future of the best in the world.
look too
Gary Lineker, the former English soccer player who is a fan of Messi and Maradona, gave his opinion without a filter and they could throw him out of the BBC
Lapidary report of the footballers' union against the wear and tear for the World Cup in Qatar: "He was suicidal"
Gio Simeone and an effort award: Scaloni summoned him for the friendlies of the Argentine National Team