Four times Champions League winner. Six times world footballer of the year. This is Lionel Messi's personal career record before the duel with Bayern Munich. The FC Barcelona superstar is not getting any younger, but his club's dependence on him is growing.
Lisbon (dpa) - 790 million euros! According to unanimous estimates, FC Barcelona has invested this much money in transfer payments for new players in the past three years alone.
Before the quarter-finals against Bayern Munich on August 14th in Lisbon (9 p.m. / Sky), the five-time Champions League winner still knows only too well: Whether or not you have a chance against Bayern always depends still largely depends on the shape of a single exceptional striker: Lionel Messi, "the superstar of the last decade", as Bayern boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge calls the little Argentine. "He has something that possibly no one else on this planet has. He can decide a game on his own."
Lionel Messi is now 33 years old and the last of his four personal Champions League triumphs was five years ago. Nonetheless, FC Barcelona's dependency on its best player has increased rather than decreased since then.
He also scored a goal himself in the 3-1 quarter-finals against SSC Napoli and took the corner and the penalty before the other two goals. "In times of uncertainty there is one certainty: Messi," wrote the Spanish newspaper "El Pais". You could also put it this way: in the middle of a gigantic "Catalan crisis circus" ("Süddeutsche Zeitung"), it is the only reliable constant.
The search for a new president has turned into a dirty power struggle at FC Barcelona. The search for a recognized heir to Pep Guardiola, respected by all the stars, has recently brought to light only two coaches who were controversial from the start: Ernesto Valverde and Quique Setién. After the transfer and salary excesses of recent years, this proud club urgently needs new money and transfers that make sense from a sporting point of view.
Because Ousmane Dembélé (Borussia Dortmund), Antoine Griezmann (Atlético Madrid) and Philippe Coutinho (Liverpool FC), who has now been awarded to FC Bayern, cost an estimated total of around 400 million euros and should actually relieve Messi. So far, only the opposite has happened with world champion Griezmann, with slight cutbacks.
Of course, Messi also sees this and reacted to it in an unusually public way, but then again in a way that he often subverts: with a criticism that came across as snotty rather than constructive. "Everything has been bad since January," he said after missing the Spanish championship. The whole season they were "an inconsistent, weak team".
The rumor industry has been living quite well for several days from the speculation that he could say goodbye in 2021 after his multi-million euro contract with Inter Milan expires. But first comes: Messi absolutely wants to win the Champions League again - and that makes it dangerous for Bayern. Especially since the potential Messi guard Alphonso Davies paused training because of slight adductor problems.
How to stop the superstar? "I think hundreds or thousands of people have tried to answer this question before me," said Leon Goretzka during the Munich team's short training camp on Portugal's Algarve coast. "I think it only works as a collective. We will have to fight as a team." The Bayern professional is looking forward to Messi: "After playing against Cristiano Ronaldo a few times, it's nice to be able to meet the second absolutely defining footballer of the last decade again. Let's see how it looks up close. "
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200812-99-139642 / 3
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