Leo Messi defines himself as an introverted person. Those who have lived there know that the Argentine is a man of few words, who expresses himself more with gestures and silences than with great dissertations. Reading it between the lines, as it has expanded its legend, has become an art that has tested coaches, locker rooms, executives and managers. Some, like Pep Guardiola, knew how to understand him and then promote him on the pitch. Others, like Quique Setión, failed resoundingly in the attempt. Neymar Júnior managed to beat him thanks to the intervention of Luis Enrique, while Antoine Griezmann still looks like a vulgar striker, far from what he was at Atletico Madrid, when he matches on the pitch with the 10.
The strongest conclusion left by the interview with Jordi Évole is that Messi will continue to be played in the coming months. From January 1 he will be free to negotiate his departure with any club in the world, but he maintains that he will wait until June 30, when he will be 34 years old, to communicate his intentions for the future. Along the way he will have been able to meet the new president of Barça, who will come to the position ready to present him with a sports project that will convince him to stay at the Camp Nou. Signing another renewal is a half-open door that not long ago, when Josep Maria Bartomeu commanded the club, it was closed. Today, with Koeman on the bench and Pedri offering passing lines on the pitch, and despite the team having few options in the League and not being among the favorites to win the Champions League, the predisposition of the 10 it is larger than in summer.
The damage has already been done to Leo Messi
Messi will let them try to seduce him and will examine the interpretive capacity of a new board that will have a job, from January 25, to repair the economic hole caused by the covid and the mismanagement of the previous directive. However, he has already dropped that the club “is very bad” and that “it will be difficult for him to return to where he was”. And he added: “It will be difficult to bring players because there is no money. Important footballers have to be signed to win everything again and it will cost a lot.”
Therefore, taking into account his competitive voracity and the fact that he does not have many years left to add success to the elite, he suggests that no candidate in the box will be able to turn Barça around like a sock; that the change of era will not be instantaneous even if Xavi Hernández (whom he wanted as coach when they fired Valverde) is on the horizon; that the transition is perhaps longer than it could bear. He will be grateful to start talks with a new president after Bartomeu’s “lies”, but suspects that he will have to choose between a project in his infancy (and with a low salary) at the club of his life and an outing that, according to com, would tarnish his career as a Barça player. So, just in case, he warns, “If I leave, I’d like to do it in the best way.”
“There is a match”
Sunday’s interview softens Messi’s position months after the bureaufax and his complaints about Suárez’s farewell, but does not dispel the feeling that he is more outside than inside Barça. However, in the Barça offices, where they know that the future of the entity will be focused in one way or another depending on what Messi ends up deciding, they send half-full glass messages and celebrate the doubts of the 10: “The best thing is that now he does see project”. The same in the locker room, where for days they have seen the Argentine as released: “Suddenly it seems as if he is rethinking to stay.” Meanwhile, at polling stations, where the collection of member signatures is intensifying before January 11, they are preparing for weeks with the captain at the center of the debate. “There’s party,” they predict.
With Messi’s doubts about the table and the door half open to a renewal, a soap opera of less than five months begins that will test the interpretive ability of the new president of Barça and that will mark the management of the club in a precarious context . It will take imagination and left hand to get the 10 fulfills his American dream without first going through any European competitors like PSG or Manchester City.
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