Messi goes, Messi stays
The Argentine star could leave the Barcelona club, which would be a great blow to the city's image
The day had to come when Messi would leave Barça. And it will be more traumatic than the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid. Because Messi is culé blood for 20 years and the player who has governed the destinies of the club for more than a decade. Cristiano was a great signing and was a great sale because Juventus paid the same as Real Madrid, but along the way the Portuguese player lost four Champions.
Maybe Messi won't leave. To write this chronicle on the same night that he sent a bureaufax to Barça executing the small print of his clause is very daring. That's why you shouldn't stay for his departure, nor for his renewal, because anything can happen. It is necessary to analyze carefully the gesture, the moment, the situation of the club and how it is the azulgrana surroundings when the sun comes out again.
The Post Office website defines Burofax as a document that requires indisputable delivery, serving as proof against third parties and is always delivered under the signature of the recipient. It is not trivial to look for the definition because that Post Office official who has arrived at the Camp Nou offices was carrying a page of history with him. A goodbye or at least a desperate manoeuvre by the Argentinean to turn his club around. Because Messi will be many things, good and bad, but he feels those colours because he has not known others. To stop being a "One Club Men" will cost him the same as it cost Raul in his day when he set out for the Bundesliga.
The Barcelona directive has already made a move. If it has been leaked about the Burofax, they can't be left behind and they have also leaked that they have responded with another where they say they want him to stay. There is no mention of the 700 million euro clause, nor of other legal issues. They tell him that Barça wants him. Perhaps this directive has not shown him as it should, but they know that even the most "indepe" soçi would speak well of Spain in order to keep him. And that is a lot.
A lot has happened between Bartomeu and Messi. He has renewed his contract twice. The first in 2014 with a salary of 20 million euros and the second in 2017 with a clause of 700 million euros and 40 of token. The only two good gestures have been when the money has flowed. The rest is history that revisionism will take away in a few years. A sports planning in decline, the defeats against Roma, Liverpool and Bayern and that political stink that the club has always had and that Messi has never liked. That match against Las Palmas on October 1, in the middle of an illegal referendum, was played because Messi demanded it. The club turned its profile up and some of their colleagues didn't want to play.
If Messi wants to leave Barça he will have to put an offer of around 100 million euros on the table. Nobody expects a figure close to 700 million and the club is not for half truths as it already happened with Neymar. The directive would celebrate the exit in the privacy. A round figure that would balance their accounts and allow them to leave the club without making any economic noise. Because the sporting noise has already done so, whatever happens, by tightening the rope with their franchise player.
If Bartomeu leaves, Messi stays. But the accounts don't leave that board of directors well and truly drowned the club until they left him with a devalued staff and leaks for every brick in his stadium. The income statement above Messi. They do not want to guarantee the losses in their pocket and end up ruined. Because after the Argentinean there will be life in Barça. But it will be hard and the drought will erase the path of Cruyff and Guardiola.
Everything is possible in football. In this new world in which we have been living since March. In this reckless Barça that closes an era more than a cycle. If Messi has moved the foundations of Barça by asking to be let out, perhaps it will not be so difficult to move the cathedral of Milan.