Messi's escape, a complicated international operation

Several countries are receiving the seismic waves from the earthquake that shook the world of sport this week, a telluric cataclysm that goes beyond the limits of football. The possible departure of Messi from Barcelona does not only imply the obvious sporting keys of the departure of a player from one country to another, from a multi-million dollar club (which has come to a halt) to another nouveau riche club that can cope with his transfer and his high salary. There are social, health, economic and, of course, fiscal consequences. All of these are the object of interest by the governments of the countries in which speculation is being made, and the Argentine star could become a superlative asset to which it is unimaginable to think that an institution such as FCB could have been forced to leave after two decades of a professional career linked to the entity. The reasons why Messi wants to leave the club where he grew up in football and the city and the country that took him in and turned him into the mega crack that he is are only to be found in the manifest inability to manage the Barcelona of President Bartomeu and his successive boards of directors since he took over the club. A regrettable drift, covered up for years with more or less attractive titles, which has ended in rupture. And when a manager loses his main employee, the one who generates millions in income and a quantifiable value above what it costs, the only person responsible is the manager who would be immediately killed in any multinational in the world. He would not have even put on his pyjamas as chairman on the day the break-up was announced.

Spain, the Spanish region of Catalonia and the city of Barcelona are looking on with sadness and great concern at this departure. The income generated by Messi's tourist attraction for the Catalan capital is very high, except for the exceptional nature of the current situation. The Barça Museum is the fourth most visited museum in Spain. Messi paid in taxes each year for all his income in Spain more than fifty million euros, most of which is deductions for personal income tax and image rights. The hole for the Treasury is remarkable, because it is surely the citizen with the highest volume of income from employment in our country. His departure, together with that of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018, will deprive the Spanish public coffers of almost one hundred million euros in annual income. To which we must add the fall in the value of the League, whose interest will decline across the globe (America and Asia especially) and throw down the prices of football rights for television. Advertisers will lose part of their interest in this product. Spain is the big loser of Lionel Messi's escape. 

The United Kingdom is the country most likely to welcome this golden calf who changes his residence. The negotiation with Manchester City owned by Abu Dhabi United Group seems to be advanced and Messi will meet again in the British city with his former coach in Barcelona, Guardiola, which opens the doubt about second parts that were never good. The interest of this fund in football has led it to expand in several countries in recent years creating a kind of football trust with branches in the United States, Uruguay, Australia, Japan, Spain or Belgium. The possibility that the Argentinean player will move to the City opens expectations for his friend Luis Suárez in any of the clubs of the owner's orbit.

Italy may be the unexpected guest of this party because Inter Milan has been owned since October 2018 by Chinese tycoon Steven Zhang, son of the owner of Suning, China's second largest non-public company. It is the only Italian club that could undertake such an operation. His Uruguayan friend could also play there from very soon once the international transfers were resolved (the case of Suárez is another example of the irresponsibility of the current management of Barcelona that communicates by telephone to its third maximum goal scorer of history that it does not have him despite the fact that both parties still have a contract of almost a year... and without having any substitute, a bad management of manual). The hidden key to Messi's chances of success in Italy lies in the much lower tax burden in the transalpine country for large fortunes like his or Cristiano's. The hell of Spain is clearly softened in Italy by a fiscal policy that favours the arrival of big capital, even though left-wing options are in force there. Any citizen who settles in Italy for work reasons and has not lived there in the last ten years will pay a substitute tax, a flat rate of 100,000 euros for all income generated by their activities abroad, including real estate and contracts for image rights. This is precisely what motivated the tax investigation into Messi (also the Portuguese) and the million-dollar penalty he has paid in Spain. The star has a network of companies and foundations, as well as being the owner of a hotel chain. 

New York City Football Club's membership of Abu Dhabi has triggered rumours of a possible deal with Messi that would include a two- or three-year contract in Manchester and the last few seasons with the Big Apple team. The United States would thus be the last link in the career of the best player in the history of the game. This hypothesis also includes the future of his friend Suárez with whom he could coincide in New York, an experience that both would share with their families in the most important city on the planet. Messi's arrival in the United States would place him in the American universe of the great stars of sport (and its succulent advertising market). There, too, he would be welcomed with open arms by the Argentinian, who would leave him in charge of tax collection, despite the fact that the tax burden is one of the lowest in the world. Elite sportsmen and women pay federal taxes in each state and also state taxes, depending on the state in which they play as visitors. The figures they have to pay are very different in each state, but at the federal level the income of the American coffers would benefit. 

A stream of pressure has begun to build up in Argentina to get Messi back home to play the last years of his career, so that he can bring his immense wealth and business to a country suffocated by debt and unemployment. In his home town, Rosario, he owns several urban complexes such as the Aqualina building or the Azahares residential complex, which are managed by his Argentinean companies and could see their image and activity revitalised if Leo returns to his country two decades after his departure at the age of just twelve. Recovering the legendary footballer would be a great opportunity to raise the morale of a country that thought it was beginning to emerge from the social and economic crisis by dismissing Mauricio Macri and recovering Kirchnerism, and which nine months later has already realised that Alberto Fernández and the revived Cristina Fernández are not going to perform that miracle.