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Earthquake: Lionel Messi leaves Barcelona

Sacrificed in Barcelona's fight for the Super League: What is really behind the departure of Lionel Messi?

How a year after staying even though he was desperate to leave, suddenly Messi was kicked out even though he longed to stay?

Why did Aporta oppose the transfer of 2.7 billion euros to the Spanish league and how is Florentino Perez related?

Michael will prepare for the process below the surface that led to the earthquake at Camp Nou

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• Lionel Messi

• Barcelona in football

• Joan Laporta

• Florentino Perez

• The Super League

• Paris Saint-Germain

Michael Yochin

Sunday, 08 August 2021, 07:15 Updated: 07:16

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Barcelona fans protest against management over Lionel Messi's intention to leave (from Twitter)

The hallucinatory saga of Leo Messi and Barcelona is divided into two parts.

In 2020 the flea ostensibly longed to leave the club, but failed.

In 2021 the flea ostensibly longed to stay at the club, but failed.

There is a great absurdity in this - the circumstances presented to us have always been against him.

With all the immense power Messi has accumulated in Barcelona, ​​he has not been able to get what he wanted, neither a year ago nor now.

And this raises questions, because the real picture of the situation is very complex.

Beneath the surface, processes take place that are not easy to spot, sometimes even for the main protagonists in the affair.

It is easier to understand the plot last year, because Messi did not really intend to leave, but took advantage of the situation to wage a war against the corrupt administration headed by President Joseph Maria Bartomeu and bring about his removal.

He succeeded in doing so, and Joan Laporta won the election with the stated goal of healing the club after years of catastrophic management, both financially and image-wise.

More on Walla!

The king of goals, the king of titles, the king of victories: the record book of Lionel Messi in Barcelona

To the full article

What led to the explosion this week?

Lionel Messi (Photo: Reuters)

The change even paved the way for Messi's stay on paper. The Argentine star demonstrated maximum flexibility in salary negotiations, went towards the club knowing that the financial crisis was very deep, and conveyed an absolute willingness to end his European career at the Camp Nou, as he always dreamed. Many years ago he declared: "I will only leave Barcelona if they kick me out." Then, precisely on Thursday, which began with multiple reports of a solemn signing of a new contract, he was kicked out with a particularly laconic statement on Barça's website. How is this possible?

Laporte's change of attitude was sudden and radical. For weeks he radiated unbridled optimism. The club have made new signings, including Con Aguero brought in especially thanks to his close friendship with Messi. "We appreciate Leo's desire to stay and thank him for that. I sleep well at night and dream of Messi," the president announced just earlier this week.

The economic constraints were well known, not only to management but also to the general public.

Under existing regulations in the league, Barça were required to cut € 200 million in expenses in order to register players who are not on the squad, including Messi who became a free agent in June.

Despite this, the new management radiated calm and complete confidence that the issues would be resolved to keep the superstar.

"Only small technical details remain," everyone heard for weeks.

And then - boom!

It turned out that Barcelona could not sign Messi, and he was left out.

The economic constraints were well known.

Joan Laporta (Photo: Reuters)

It makes a lot of sense to assume, then, that an event that took place these days just caused the extreme turnaround. There was only one critical event - the Spanish league approved the sale of a 10 per cent campaign to the CVC investment fund for an immediate inflow of € 2.7 billion for the clubs in the two major leagues, which are in budgetary distress in the shadow of the Corona crisis. Real Madrid and Barcelona are supposed to get the biggest slice of the pie, but they are actually opposed to the move.

The official reason is an underestimation of the league's value - the contract was signed for 50 years, and both clubs believe that CVC will earn far too much through the loan the Spaniards will now receive. The most important real reason is that the move will make it very difficult to set up the Super League - and for Real and Barça the project that exploded with such a big noise in April is still alive and well. It was not for nothing that it was Andrea Anieli, the Juventus chairman who still continues to dream of the Super League, who lay on the fence to prevent a similar CVC deal with the Italian league a year ago.

For weeks, Barcelona have been in talks with league president Javier Tabas in order to flex the terms and register players without making such extensive spending cuts, after having difficulty leaving the highest paid - Antoine Griezmann, Filipe Coutinho, Samuel Omititi, Miralem Pianic and Osman Dembele.

The initial assessment in the Spanish media after the announcement of Messi's departure was that it was a bluff, meaning Laporta's desperate attempt to put pressure on Tabas, who did not want the league to lose its best and most attractive player.

However, the press conference held by the Barça president yesterday, with unequivocal statements that the decision was irreversible, eroded this belief.

It is possible that this is not a means of pressure in negotiations, but rather the imposition of blame on the league in a war that Barcelona perceives as more important than the future of its great stars.

In choosing between Messi and Peres, Laporta chose him.

Florentino Perez (Photo: Reuters)

"The only way to sign Leo was to accept terms that would have been detrimental to Barça. We did not want to mortgage the club's future. The league informed us that it would have allowed us to sign Messi if we had agreed to the move it is making. "This club is above all," Laporte said.

In practice, this means that accepting the deal with CVC would have paved Messi's way back to the Camp Nou, just as the player himself, the fans and the league wanted. However, Laporta knows that the contract with the investment fund eliminates the possibility of establishing a Super League, and it is likely that he was put under enormous pressure from Real Madrid.

In choosing between Messi and Florentino Perez, Laporte chose Perez.

In choosing between an existing star and a mock league, he chose the illusion.

It now appears that this resounding fiasco will be exploited by the club to prove to the public that the league management is causing it harm, to drop the whole case on Tabas, and to justify promoting the idea of ​​a Super League that is supposed to save Barcelona from total bankruptcy.

Use him as a pawn in a game bigger than him.

Lionel Messi (Photo: Reuters)

Laporta may argue that under existing frameworks Barça have no future, and are not even able to sign Messi - even though the blame lies directly with Bartomeu, and Laporta himself has played a significant part in the defeat, as he did not have a serious strategy to solve the inflated salary and debt problem.

Instead of working, he wasted precious time and created a false impression of an impending signature.

It now appears that the other acquisition players will also not be able to play for Barcelona, ​​and Aguero may leave without wearing the media in an official match.

Bottom line, Messi was sacrificed in Barcelona's fight for the Super League.

The league gave the club a chance to keep him, but Laporta did not like the conditions, and he preferred to cut here and now, before getting caught up in a real public debate on the issue.

He preferred to use Messi as a kind of pawn in a game that seemed bigger, without fully understanding the intensity of the image blow.

Bartomeu destroyed Barcelona from within and left behind decay and destruction, but Laporta's guilt is now no less small.

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