The Argentine footballer, who had tried to leave Barcelona in the summer of 2020, can now sign with the club he wants as his current contract is due to expire in six months.
The World with AFP
Here is Lionel Messi free to engage where he wants. Six months from the end of his contract in Barcelona, the six-fold Golden Ball can negotiate with other clubs from Friday January 1, with a view to a departure next summer.
As the winter transfer window opens this weekend in Europe and Monday in Spain, the next few weeks promise to be decisive for Barça and for the future of the Argentine superstar (33) , who already wanted to leave last summer and that FIFA regulations now authorize discussions with another club for a departure on July 1 st .
The Catalan club will elect its new president on January 24, and the line of conduct of the new management will be crucial for convince Messi to stay in Barcelona.
Tired of unstable management, a club in perpetual crisis for over a year, a succession of coaches (three in the space of a year) and disappointing results, such as humiliation on history suffered last August against Bayern Munich in the Champions League (8-2), Messi wanted to leave the club at the end of August. But he ultimately stayed, constrained by his contract and by President Josep Maria Bartomeu, who has since resigned.
“How do you expect Messi not to want to leave?”
“Leo” hasn’t “decided anything” yet. But the one who had left his city of Rosario (Argentina) at 13, in 2000, to join the Masia, the Barcelona training center, confided last Sunday on the Sexta television channel that” the club is doing very badly and it will be difficult to bring it back to the level it was at “.
Nothing to worry about. “How do you expect Messi not to want to leave with a team like this?”, s ‘asked Marca , Spain’s best-selling newspaper, on its site on December 19, after the Catalans’ dismal performance against Valencia (2-2) in La Liga.
Present in stands on Tuesday, Messi bowed his head again in a sign of desperation, after Barça’s draw against Eibar at Camp Nou (1-1).
There remains the question of several tens of millions of euros, ie the amount of his salary: where could the Argentine land, even if no transfer fee will be payable? Barça, PSG (which they will find in the Champions League in a few weeks), Manchester City, the United States? Another unexpected destination? Only one thing is certain: the soap opera of the possible transfer of one of the best players of all time will punctuate the coming weeks because, from now on, Lionel Messi has the choice.