Lionel Messi's silence over new Barcelona contract means there is a genuine possibility he could leave

Andy West 20:19 22/08/2017
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  • On 5 July, Barcelona announced that Lionel Messi had agreed a new four year contract to stay at the club until 2021, apparently bringing months of negotiation and speculation to an end.

    But that was not the end of the story.

    Now, nearly two months later and with the new season already underway, Messi has still not signed that contract and his future is in fresh doubt, with his existing deal set to expire at the end of the current campaign.

    Why has Messi not put pen to paper?

    According to the club, there is no problem: the deal will definitely go ahead and completing the formalities is simply a matter of timing, with only the busy pre-season period preventing it from being done so far.

    But a very different explanation is being offered by a former board member, Agusti Benedito, who yesterday claimed that Messi is refusing to sign because he is seriously contemplating leaving the club due to his concerns over the competence of the board.

    It must be acknowledged that Benedito can be accused of having a personal agenda: he is preparing to launch a formal challenge to current president Josep Maria Bartomeu, with the hope of forcing early presidential elections in which he would presumably stand.

    From that viewpoint, it could be argued that Messi’s contract situation is being used as a pawn by Benedito in his power struggle with Bartomeu over the club’s presidency, and there’s really nothing to worry about because Messi has already agreed his new terms.

    But that optimistic explanation just doesn’t feel right. It’s extremely rare, if not unheard of, for players not to sign contracts they had agreed six weeks previously, and there’s an unmistakeable sense that something nasty is in the air.

    Naturally, Messi’s failure to sign – whatever might be the reason – has sparked speculation, especially from the British media, that he is buying time to allow Manchester City to meet his €300million buyout clause, meaning Barca would lose Messi in exactly the same way they lost Neymar.

    That scenario, however, is highly unlikely to unfold for purely business reasons: rather than spending so much money on Messi now, City could instead persuade him to let his contract run down until June, when they could sign him for nothing on a Bosman free transfer.

    Messi leaving on a free transfer? Can you even begin to imagine the repercussions? It would be one of the biggest stories in football history and an utter disaster for Barcelona, creating shockwaves which would take an extremely long time to dissipate.

    But it’s genuinely possible. After such a turbulent summer, Messi knows full well that the club’s current administration desperately need to generate the kind of positive headlines which would inevitably arise from his new contract being signed. The fact that he hasn’t done so is telling.

    For years, Messi’s best friend in the dressing room was Dani Alves, who famously left Barca in the summer of 2016 after – by his own admission – tricking the board, with whom he had a terrible relationship, into giving him a free transfer.

    And this summer, another of Messi’s closest allies, Neymar, also left the club on bitter terms, making plain his distaste for Bartomeu and co this weekend by claiming they “should not be there” and that the club “deserves better”.

    In that context, it’s almost impossible to believe that Messi is happy with the direction being taken by the club, and very possible to consider that he feels the final few years of his career are in danger of being wasted.

    Let’s be clear: nobody really knows what Messi is thinking. But all the signs are that he is not happy, and that at the very least he wants to scare the club into thinking that he really could leave.

    He might be waiting to see whether they eventually manage to sign reinforcements this summer; he might be waiting to see whether Benedito’s impending challenge to Bartomeu’s presidency will be successful.

    But one thing for certain: he is waiting for something. For Barcelona, there is an increasingly real danger that he will carry on waiting all the way until the end of June, and then leave.

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