August 25th, 2020 will always be remembered as one of the saddest and most nerve-wracking days for FC Barcelona fans all around the world. Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest soccer player to ever exist, who holds almost every record in the game, informed Barcelona of his desire to leave the club through an official document. He asked to activate the ‘get-out’ clause in his contract that would see him leave for free, after having been with the same club for twenty years.
The dissatisfaction with the club, especially the management, was visible to Messi. He had mentioned how the club was not doing a good job with bringing in fresh talent on numerous occasions, and we as fans did not want to believe that Messi would ever even consider leaving.
Clearly, Barcelona has had this coming for a while, because the players are getting old, (the average age of its players is 30) and the superstar player, Messi, needed new and younger players as his supporting cast in order to conquer Europe and win trophies again. Therefore, the management, in particular club president Josep Maria Bartomeu, should be blamed for this situation.
This whole situation escalated in the season of 2020, as FC Barcelona went trophyless for the first time since 2008, along with being absolutely dismantled by Bayern Munich with the score of 2-8 in the Champions League. Ever since the beginning of the season, the playstyle of Barcelona was not impressive and far from how prime Barcelona in 2010 or 2015 would play.
As the media was going crazy with Messi’s announcement, Barca fans still had hope. However, we all held our breath as Messi did not show up for the Team Medical test on August 30th, and he told the club that his next destination would likely be Manchester City, where his former coach, Pep Guardiola, was the head coach. I wanted my childhood hero to stay so badly that I turned off all social media news, so even if he left I wouldn’t see it.
Since the club was desperate, they hung on to the contract details and told Messi that the only way to leave was for him to pay the $813 million dollars, which was in his release clause. The interesting thing about this is that, in his interview with Goal, Messi stated that the club president has told him that he could leave anytime he wanted. I believe that this was not fair to Messi at all, and as much as I wanted him to stay, if Bartomeu gave Messi his word, then he had to honor it.
As we were all waiting for the final verdict, Messi announced that he would be staying with Barcelona, due to the fact that he did not want to take Barcelona to court because of his love for the club. This is just a class act by Leo and I hope the club honors it and repays it.
After being a devoted Barca fan since I was 6, I am just extremely grateful that I will see Messi in the Barca shirt for a little longer, because you have to believe me when I say there is no one better, and there will never be another player like him.
Now what the club has to do is present Messi with different projects in order to improve the squad and help Messi win more trophies. If they achieve this goal and win a couple of trophies, along with the Champions League which Barca has not won in 5 years, I believe that Messi will stay longer than a season.
