While Messi is commendable for not dragging this through the courts, the underlying issue with the problems at Barca does fundamentally come down to Messi and his significant influence on everything that goes on there......whether or not it’s always with intent, this is the only example in football of a player being bigger than the club.....
He is able to influence who manages the team, who is transferred in and out, who runs the club....he also commands an extortionate pay packet - however he has earned that right....
barca have never managed the exit of their golden generation that well as it’s often been masked by the genius of Messi - they had Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta - all have left but never really been replaced.....the problem now is that Messi is in his twilight years of his career - as great as he is he cannot influence everything like he once did and now the club is unable to move in a new direction or plan without his influence/interference.....
I think it would have been best for both sides to have moved on now - Barca cannot rebuild until Messi has left, Messi can’t win anything in a new rebuilt Barca team that is a shadow of the teams he played in the past........
cant see this next season being great for him or Koeman.....
No it doesn't, are you fecking insane? Barca's ownership model by its 100,000 socios is plagued by two opposite camps that have been fighting for over a decade. You have got Rosell + Bartomeu regime stripping Cruyff of his honorary presidency and inviting Nunez back to club events, Rosell + Bartomeu suing Laporta for claimed losses in the club's accounts and testifying in court during a legal case until it was dismissed by a judge in 2017. When Rosell came in, anything to do with Laporta, Cruyff or Guardiola had to be destroyed, and it's gotten so out of control that it's almost destroying the club. This is a battle that dwarfs anything going on in the pitch.
On the pitch, the damage is clear: Barca have spent €1Billion on lemons and currently have an annual wage bill of €500m, with a squad that cannot compete in Europe for over 5 years. This is partly due to a dysfunctional politics at the board level, and the need to cover up the fraud that's been going on at that club. Who the feck swaps Arthur with Pjanic unless to "fix" the accounts? Who would pay €130m for Griezmann? Who would loan Coutinho after spending €160m on him in the first place? Why would a club of Barca's standing loan Kevin Prince Boateng from fecking Sassuolo? Or Paulinho from Evergrande? Or buy Braithwaite from Leganes? Or spend €160m on Dembele? This is a club that has lost the plot for a long time, and Messi's brilliance has helped masked it big time.
Messi's agenda to win now isn't in sync with what Barca can provide. He's asking to leave, Barca might even collect a fee (for someone who came free and scored 634 times and won 34 trophies in the process) and Bartomeu's answer is feck you, pay us €700m or you stay. Instead of getting his salary off, collecting a transfer fee and rebuilding the team. WTF?
I'm happy he's not going to City this year, but as a football fan you want one of the greatest to play at the highest level and you want to enjoy his last years of his indisputable talent. Watching him rot at Barcelona must be a sad sight for any football fan, or else why the feck bother watching football in the first place.