Messi and Barcelona .. Why are we here?

The Barcelona team is returning by bus after a LaLiga match in the fall of 2009, Guardiola sits in the front as usual with Manel Astarte, then receives a text message on his phone saying: "I feel that I am no longer important to this team, so ...".

That message was from Lionel Andres Messi, 22, who was sitting at the back of the bus at the time, and that was the editorial of Dermot Corrigan, the Independent and "espn" correspondent for years in Madrid, for an article titled "What is Messi's actual influence in Barcelona?"

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Zlatan had just arrived at Barcelona, ​​and with his innate style of play he began to descend into the midfield and contribute to the preparation and control the course of the game, and by extension he swallowed a large part of Messi's space in the rear.

Zlatan was a great player, and still, and Barcelona had spent a huge sum to join him, but the largest amount ever in the history of the club, in addition to that he glowed strongly in the first 5 league matches and scored all of them, and some of these goals were made by Messi himself.

What Messi felt then was exactly what he said;

It was "no longer important to the team".

Please note that we are talking about Messi 2009, who was not the scorer of the team nor the most important goal maker, but rather his promising emerging talent, so doubts about his position with Guardiola were logical with the advent of a deal like Zlatan, and this skepticism had one result;

Authorize it to the coach.

You know what happened next.

The whole world knows because Zlatan was keen on that, but it was the first moment of Messi's clash in Barcelona, ​​and basically it was caused by a wrong contract from Guardiola, which later became clear from his City experience that he was not the best qualified to manage the transfer file in any team, but Messi's reaction at the time was His reaction is the same now;

Desire to leave.

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Zlatan and Messi in Barcelona

Messi is not an idiot or a recluse as some imagined over the past years, Messi knows how amazing he is and understands what he can do on the field.

It is absurd to imagine that a man won all these titles and championships, dodged all these players, scored and made all these goals, he did not know his worth and did not understand that he was one of the best footballers in history if not the best of them ever.

Guardiola removed two slips from the depth and set his roles and then sold him at the end of the season, and the truth is that he never regretted this deal, but there was one person who strongly regretted this deal is Roussel, the man who, according to Zlatan, told him that selling him to Milan after one season with a huge loss was "The worst work agreement he made in his life."

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Corrigan recounts that Russell and Bartomeu had been friends from an early age, and when they joined the Laporta Council in 2003, they were strongly opposed to the council’s policy and Cruyff’s position in particular.

The man who was credited with the club's philosophy and footballing accomplishments, and the man who was able to favor an inexperienced coach like Guardiola over another with a heavy weight of titles like Mourinho.

This club looked to them like Cruyff's club, not Barcelona's club, and that stirred a man's hatred in them;

Cruyff attends meetings whenever he wants, returns to the Netherlands whenever he wants, intervenes whenever he wants, steps down whenever he wants, and no one is able to hold him accountable when he makes a mistake, and actually he does not occupy a position of legal responsibility from which he can be removed.

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Bartomeu, in particular, was never what he called "the children of the club".

In fact, Bartomeu spent a great period of his youth and adolescence in the basketball team of Barcelona's local rivals Espanyol, but he managed to reach his position in the club due to his relationship with Brussels and his basketball experience, and even then Laporta did not have much respect.

One of the "Athletic" sources inside the club says that Laporta once came out to cancel a decision that Bartomeu had made to appoint a coach for the basketball team, and publicly mocked the latter's decision, which prompted him to resign several months later, accompanied by Russell of course.

When the Laporta board passed away in 2010, Roussel was ready to take over, and he saw the most suitable person to be his deputy, Bartomeu.

Corrigan says that the only reason Russell volunteered to resign following the scandal over the investigation into the circumstances of Neymar's inclusion in 2013 was Bartomeu's presence as interim deputy so that he can return later.

Bartomeu and Russell

The most important thing is that since the duo assumed responsibility in 2010, they have deliberately excluded everything related to Cruyff and his legacy at the club;

They stripped the man of his job as honorary president of the club and then returned to the Netherlands, and then the harassment began to Guardiola until he left in 2012, and even accused the Laporta council of causing an economic crisis for the club and leaving huge debts amounting to 23 million euros, and they sued him on this basis in a case that continued until a judgment was passed in it. 2017 was useless and dismissed.

The duo did not have a specific plan or vision for Barcelona's future, neither in terms of sports nor economics, but they were sure of one important thing;

No matter what he does, the credit will be given to Cruyff and his followers as long as they are around.

Some observers of the club's affairs assert that the duo remained confined to that idea until the moment;

Eliminate Cruyff, Guardiola and Laborta and build their own version of Barcelona, ​​but the demolition process never stopped and the idea took hold of them to the point of obsession, to the point that they not only ousted Cruyff, but also brought back Josep Luis Nونيñez, the man many Catalans consider the worst president ever to Barcelona. , To the fore again, and seeing him in the Camp Nou bleachers became a familiar sight.

When the desire to destroy, you later discover that it is much easier to demolish than to build, but it is too late.

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After the Zlatan incident, Russell wanted to recruit a superstar to replace the late Swedish.

Without Cruyff, Barcelona did not have a clear vision of a sporting project, and after the duo finished erasing his trace in the club, they started their own project, which can be summed up in a very miserable version of the Galacticos policy of Florentino Perez and Santiago Bernabeu before him, and the truth is that this policy was a logical result of his control. Duo like Russell and Bartomeu on the heels of Barcelona;

A duo who does not understand a letter about football, but at the same time, he wants to control the team, and most importantly;

He would like to be credited for his successes, and in these circumstances there was no other way but to seek out stars with astronomical numbers, regardless of their suitability for the team's needs.

Nobody remembers the name of the coach with whom Real Madrid won the first 5 copies of the Champions League, but everyone remembers the Santiago Bernabeu, who managed to bring Di Stefano, Puskas, Gento and others.

Florentino Perez is more popular and influential at Real Madrid than Ancelotti, Mourinho and Pellegrini combined.

This is what Bartomeu and Roussel aspired to;

That their legacy be the engagements that he made and brought the team championships, and that everyone remember this era later as the era of Russell and Bartomeu and not the Cruyff era, to prove to everyone that they can achieve the same success without him.

Russell got his golden chance with Neymar;

First, he tried to include him in 2011, during the Guardiola era, and immediately after the departure of Zlatan, and later Pep said that he called Neymar to persuade him to join Barcelona, ​​but the matter was not successful, and then the decisive moment came in 2013.

Neymar not only contracted Galacticos, but was an opportunity to defeat the first godfather of Galacticos, Florentino Perez, in his game, and Russell considered Neymar's inclusion a matter of life and death for him, so much so that he traveled himself to Brazil and used his relationships there as a former director of one of the largest sports supplies companies to negotiate with "An army of Neymar's representatives" as Florentino Perez later described them, and each of them needed a "catalyst" that would make him prefer Barcelona to Real Madrid.

Later, some reports said that the total spent by Roussel to officially and unofficially sign Neymar has exceeded 220 million euros.

By the way, that was before Barcelona set Neymar's penalty clause at 220 million euros.

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Corrigan recounts that Neymar was the second "Zlatan" moment in Messi's career.

On paper, Neymar was charging much less than Messi, but by collecting the shameful conditions that Russell had to agree to at the time, which included huge sums to Neymar's father paid upon signing the contract and upon each renewal, the "Neymar family" was charging much more from Barcelona than Messi gets.

Neymar and Messi

Raphael Hernandez, the Brazilian journalist close to Barcelona, ​​claimed in 2017 during the crisis of Neymar's departure to Paris that the total sum of Neymar's father, alone, from Barcelona, ​​amounted to 90 million euros in 4 years.

This exceeds Messi's total salary for this period.

We repeat;

This is the sum of what Neymar's father got, regardless of Neymar's salary and personal privileges, which included bringing his friends from Brazil in a private plane for at least three times a month, and taking care of their "vacation" expenses in all of Catalonia, the vacations that Russell admitted during His trial that only one of them cost the club three million euros.

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In relatively recent statements that many did not pay attention to, Jordi Rora, an assistant to Vianova and Martineau after him, said that Messi had a long meeting with Tito Vianova about a week before his death on April 25, 2014, stressing that the Argentine was not sure of his desire to continue with Barcelona during these Period, but Vianova convinced him to abandon these ideas and stay.

That was days before the end of the season.

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Why may Messi want to leave in 2014?

And why might Vianova need to convince him?

What became clear later was that Russell did not want to include a great star to replace Zlatan only, what Guardiola did not know when he was asked to contact Neymar to convince him that Barcelona's new board of directors was not contracting with Neymar to next door to Messi, but rather to replace him.

In another report whose value is evident at the present moment, Ced Leo, the Guardian correspondent in Madrid, wrote on November 21, 2014, about Messi's famous interview with the Argentine newspaper "Ole", in which he said phrases that the Catalan newspaper at the time described as "disturbing", including The following phrase:

"I live in the present. All I can think of is achieving something great in the current season and only after that we will see that football is full of unexpected twists and turns. It is true that I have said more than once that I want to stay in Barcelona forever, but sometimes not. Things are going as we wish. "

The next day, his father and his agent, Jorge Messi, stated the following:

"If Barcelona comes to us tomorrow and says we have some offer and we want to sell Messi, we will have to study the matter, but now there is nothing to study or think about, nothing at all."

In this report, Sid Law tells the same story that was confirmed by all close to the club during this period, Russell and Bartomeu wanted to permanently sever the link with the past, and after the dismissal of Cruyff and the departure of Guardiola and La Porta there was nothing left of the past but the first star of the project;

Lionel Messi.

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It's all about stardom and credit for success.

One of the most important reasons for the deterioration of Russell's relationship with LaPorta was that all the credit for the success that Ronaldinho achieved was attributed to the latter, even though Russell's relations in Brazil were what settled the deal, and as long as Messi was present, Russell would feel the same threat, especially since Messi, at the time, was still young on The opposite of Xavi and Iniesta, and he had many years in the stadiums, and any successes the team would have achieved would have been attributed to him by extension, even after the retirement and departure of the rest of the elements of the continuous historical generation from 2009.

In fact, Luo confirms that many in the council of Russell were not fans of Messi in the first place, and that Javier Fauss's famous statement about "Messi who renews his contract every 6 months" was an expression of these feelings.

Basically the original statement was much worse than what was published in the press;

Faucus did not name Messi in the first place, but referred to him as "That Senor" as if he was a disgrace, in an attempt to insult him, which caused Messi's violent reaction at the time, when he stated that "Faucus does not understand him literally in football."

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From Seed's point of view, if this was what caused Messi's statements of the possibility of leaving in his dialogue with the Argentine "Ole", which is the same story that Messi's closest journalists have ever confirmed personally;

Graham Hunter, who may have been the one who conversed the most in his life, and Jaime Bayageh who wrote his autobiography.

On April 23, 2014, Bayagué wrote to the Spanish Ace (As) claiming that Manchester United had contacted the Barcelona administration to include Messi based on information they had that “Barcelona is ready to sell”, and later in August 2017 a report came out from French Telefoot following the departure Neymar, alleges that one of the reasons for the Brazilian's desire to join Paris is that the Barcelona administration has abandoned its promise to him to sell Messi, and allow him, by extension, to become the only star of the team.

Telefoot is not a known source in the world of transfers, so no one paid much attention to the matter, but a few months later Graham Hunter confirmed the same idea, although he did not state the reason, saying that the Barcelona administration was ready to sell Messi in 2014. (10) (11) (12) )

Reason?

Building a completely new team Russell and Bartomeu get all the credit for his success, a team of Brazilian talent that Russell will bring with his relations to accompany his only star Neymar on the field, and the sale of Messi was one of the most important tributaries to finance all of this, in addition to giving way to Neymar plans to shine and get a bigger and more important role In depth as a playmaker and main scorer for the team.

Briefly;

A new era with a new star that has nothing to do with the past or its symbols.

Selling Messi is political and administrative suicide, as Sid Luo described it, so the club needed a trick that pushed Messi to leave so as not to show their true intentions, and this season in particular Messi was suffering badly on and off the stadium;

On the one hand, he was looking for a cure for the strange disease that afflicted his digestive system and made him vomit more than once during matches, and on the other hand he was struggling in the courts with the case of tax evasion, a case whose main driver was a lawyer close to Florentino Perez, and her attendance was In the Bernabéu cabin is usual, and in both crises, Messi was completely alone with little support from management.

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Despite this, the two crises were not linked, but rather Perez’s desire to include Messi, which was later clarified by the leaks of Football Leaks, which alleged that the Real Madrid president tried to include him 3 times during the reign of Russell and Bartomeu (2011, 2013, 2015), may be what prompted him to pressure In Barcelona, ​​especially since the difference was clear between the media protection that Real Madrid provided to Cristiano Ronaldo during the tax crisis, and Barcelona's neglect of the whole story in the same crisis, as if they were trying to push him to leave.

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Florentino Perez

From Sid's viewpoint, this is what prompted Jorge Messi to speak precisely in this way, and to use carefully selected phrases such as "if Barcelona had made an offer", to clear his square and his son's square from any desire to leave, and to clarify the real driver of things, which is Rossell's deputy, Josep Maria Bartomeu, who resumed implementation of the plan after the resignation of his boss in mid-season, following the explosion of the Neymar transfer scandal and his trial on charges of money laundering.

After the season, according to Corrigan, Bartomeu's management used the local Catalan newspapers to blame Messi for the failure of Martino and the team's exit in the first zero season since 2009, to increase pressure on him and force him to request a departure, although Roussel himself had boasted in the same local press about his relations in America. Southern and his charming personality who completed the contract with Martineau, but after his meeting with Vianova, Messi and his father dealt with the crisis with utmost intelligence, and threw the ball into the administration's court;

If you want to sell me it is okay, but you have to state it publicly and bear the consequences.

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The reason is simple;

Messi did not really want to leave, we are talking about a man who had spent more than 15 years in Barcelona at that time, and did not know from his childhood a country other than Spain, and according to his personal statements, moving from Rosario to Barcelona was extremely difficult for him, and he did not want his children to fight Same experience.

A lazy, bored man who prefers to spend most of his free time at home, and has made his home a real castle over the years, to the point that his residence in Castelldefels in Barcelona is classified as a no-fly zone, and according to an official at Barcelona airport, "This does not happen anywhere else in the world."

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In the end, the plan failed, and Messi's contract was renewed, then Faus' role in the council was reduced to leave at the end of the matter, and this time, the Argentine did not hold his phone to send another text message, but embraced Neymar from the first moment and did not think much about the meaning of the privileges that he and his father had obtained, Or his ability to threaten his status as the star of the first team, and even to form a terrifying partnership with him with Luis Suarez in the following season, not to mention demanding his return several times, even if that would mean reducing his salary he and the rest of the "senior" in the team.

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Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez

Not only did the plan fail because of the clever statements of Messi and his father, it also failed because all of Bartomeo's attempts to put it together failed.

The goal was to find another party who could facilitate or justify the departure of Messi so that Bartomeu would not become "the president who sold the best player in the world."

In October 2016, for example, during the press conference to face Barcelona and Manchester City, a reporter asked Pep Guardiola if he had contacted Messi to persuade him to join City this past summer, and after a lengthy answer from Pep denying any contact with the Argentine, the next question came And while listening to him, Pep seemed to have remembered something, so he interrupted his interlocutor and returned to the previous question to confirm in a sarcastic tone: "If you do not believe me, you can ask Bartomeo's phone number from the journalists who published this news. I am sure they have a relationship with him, and if you call him, he will confirm to you." What I'm saying. "

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This point is precisely what Sam Lee referred to more than once in the current crisis, and he is one of the most reliable, if not the most reliable, sources for Manchester City news.

Lee clearly stated that Manchester City was always ready to welcome Messi at any cost, but he deliberately did not appear in the crisis so as not to appear bad, as if he were the club trying to kidnap Messi from Barcelona.

According to Sam Lee, City was keen that Messi finishes his affairs with Barcelona first and make it known to everyone that leaving is his personal desire, and only then will they intervene.

City are waiting now.

Since the takeover they've been ready to pounce if Messi were to leave Barca and they've had near misses.

This time they've done what they have to do and are waiting to see what happens next in Barcelona.

Bartomeu out?

Can Messi leave on a free?

- Sam Lee (@SamLee) August 26, 2020

This crisis, the crisis of the 2013-2014 season, produced several phenomena that later became routine;

The first is to use local newspapers to achieve the administration's unspoken goals.

Sometimes the goal is to exempt the administration from its responsibility in hiring an unfortunate coach, such as Martineau, and to reinforce that theory, the Argentine Federation contracted with the man to train the national team later, and in the midst of the hysteria resulting from the zero season, Iniesta's famous statement that "many things are over. Not just the Barcelona season, "one of them did not ask how Messi could nominate Martino even for Argentina, let alone appoint him, and he is the man who did not win anything with him, and no one asked why Messi did not succeed in keeping Martino in Barcelona as long as he had enough strength to appoint him. Starting off, regardless of the advent of a sharp confrontational man like Enrique, he had a big dispute with Messi in the first months because of his desire to move him from the rear.

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The second pattern that was established at that moment is the opening of a direct line of communication between the big stars on the one hand, and the club management on the other hand, or the club president rather, and bypassing all the administrative and technical structure located in the middle between this and that, which is what happened when Neymar was brought in and modified Messi contract subordinate.

The administration did not believe in the importance of the technical or sports director's role in the first place, simply because it is the one who makes the contracts, and it negotiates with the players, and all this gives it credit for any successes, which is the goal of its existence in the first place.

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What Russell and Bartomeu did not realize after him at the time was that this pattern undermined the institutional meaning of the club, and what they did not realize was that this open line with the players was not a one-way line, but rather that the players also felt that they could pressure the club president to fulfill their demands, and obtain On higher contracts, more advantages, which can be easily noticed in all subsequent renewal attempts with the "big" ones;

The talk often revolves around the "promises of the president", as happened with Busquets in 2016, for example, and Iniesta the following year, until the departure of Alves included an open conflict with Bartomeu, who claimed that he "left for personal reasons that only he and his wife and Bartomeu himself knew". The Brazilian came out describing Bartomeu By "liar" after her.

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Danny Alves and Lionel Messi

Administrative disaster, of course, but a logical turn of events.

Barcelona has transformed from a club that has a clear sports project with a specific vision and artistic direction, a club that does not suffer when the names of Ronaldinho, Deco, Eto'o and Zlatan leave, a club in which the likes of Pedro and Busquets can play major roles in it without the system being affected, to another club that does not have a project except to include stars and more Of them, in the hope that one of them will surpass the past and his only star, who continues to evoke memories of Cruyff, La Porta and Guardiola in the hearts of the fans whenever he touches the ball, and thus makes his departure easier and more acceptable to the masses.

All that happened later was nothing more than a repeat of the 2013-2014 moment, a tug of war between the two parties, whereby the administration would be able to make contracts that it thought would give it the largest possible balance regardless of its actual feasibility later, and to appoint trainers who would not be able to object to these contracts, On the other hand, the players receive renewals with high salaries, some of which are reasonable and some of them are not, and within the last section Messi's own exaggerated salary.

All this is finally added to the salary bill that became the highest in the history of football in 2018, when the total salaries of Barcelona players reached more than 430 million euros annually, and then with the inclusion of players such as Coutinho, Dembele, Griezmann and De Jong later, that bill rose to become the highest in the history of Sports entities generally generate more than half a billion euros annually.

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This is what produced the misconception among many observers of "the power and influence of the elders in Barcelona," as some imagined that Bartemio's management was all the time crushed in front of the players, and that they, headed by Messi, controlled the names of the coaches and players who came and left, something that is discussed Corrigan in his long article, confirming that many facts prove the opposite, and that the players' obtaining these huge sums was aimed at monopolizing the rest of the decisions, or rather, Bartomeu’s monopoly on them, simply because if there was an actual administration that had a technical and planning aspect, a competent sports manager would work. When these contracts were basically completed.

Among these facts, according to Corrigan:

The departure of Alves in a very humiliating way despite being Messi's closest friend, and Valverde's departure despite Messi's support for him, and the delay in granting Iniesta a contract worthy of its value, especially as he was getting half of what Neymar received, for example, even regardless of the rest of the privileges that Neymar and his father obtained, in addition to the fact That there was no player from the 30 Barcelona contracted with in the Bartomeu era connected to Messi before it in any way, except perhaps Paulinho, who mediated his transfer by Messi at the request of the same management, and at the level of coaches the same situation existed.

Despite all of this, the administration was using some of the shots to constantly confirm that Messi is the ultimate boss in Barcelona, ​​simply because this exempts it from the responsibility of the continuous decline since the 2015 trilogy until the present.

Corrigan recounts that Messi was very upset by the local Catalan media's exploitation of the cat as he ignored both Quique Setien and Idir Sarabia in the Celta Vigo match, and says that the match was tough and Barcelona's hopes for the League were at stake, and Messi did not mean to reduce the duo as much as he was trying to focus on how to win In the match, and he tries to imagine the spaces that he will use and how he will move when resuming the game, and the expression on his face was the same expression that we saw with all the former Barcelona coaches, including Guardiola himself, when instructing Messi.

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Messi's behavior was not disastrous, but it lacked civility, decency and enough respect for those who are supposed to be above him in the ranks of the club, but looking at the full picture may indicate that Messi did not diminish the respect of any coach in general in his career.

A quick return to the moment of Setien's appointment and his statement that Messi has to do more and help the team in the pressure may reveal this.

Messi could simply claim his advanced age, or his ability to help the team in other ways that are too big to be measured, or the fact that every team in the world has at least one player who does not press hard enough, including Bayern Munich, who crushed Barcelona by eight, but what we saw was Continuous attempts by Messi to keep up with the rhythm of the team and pressure more seriously and effort, at least in the first matches, and then repeat the matter upon the resumption of the season after the suspension.

Barcelona's current coach "Quique Setien"

In fact, it is not only Messi, but we have not witnessed a single situation in which the current Barcelona generation dealt with any coach without professionalism.

Think about it and you will discover that almost all of Europe's big clubs have seen a coach openly dismissed by players, either by lazy, or by breaking his instructions or intentionally losing some matches.

It happened with Mourinho and Benitez at Real Madrid, with Ancelotti and Kovac after him in Bayern Munich, and with Mourinho again in Chelsea and Manchester United, but, as far as we know, it did not happen in Barcelona, ​​but rather that the most famous and biggest incident witnessed a dispute between the top stars of the team and the coach was With Enrique in January 2015, he stayed the man for three seasons, during which he achieved a record number of titles.

Go back in time to last January, when Valverde was sacked and try to remember Barcelona's situation at the time.

After the appointment of Setien, negotiations began with Inter to join Laotaro Martinez.

After Barcelona spent more than 200 million euros in the summer, Bartomeu was ready to spend another 100 on another striker, and everything was going as usual;

More astronomical contracts to solve problems caused by the astronomical contracts that preceded it.

In another report, "The Athletic" confirms that Bartomeo's management relied on a recurring trick every summer, selling players and then recording the full sales proceeds on the ending fiscal year, then buying others and recording their sums in installments over several years, and the main goal is to balance accounts and evade From accountability, and the result is that any administration coming to Barcelona will find itself legally bound to pay huge installments for deals that Bartomeu has completed, and even after the holding of new elections next March, Barcelona will be required to pay installments for deals such as Griezmann, Coutinho, Dembele and De Young for several years to come that shackle the new council. It deprives him of the opportunity for real change.

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Dembele, Griezmann, Coutinho, and de Young

In the same report it becomes clear that the five members who resigned from Bartomeu’s board this season in the wake of the Persagit scandal did not just resign because the club’s management hired a public relations firm to defame its “enemies” on social media, but because all accounts related to the sums paid in this process were not listed. In club records.

Please pause for a moment and imagine that this council was formed over the years from very loyal to Bartomeo, and yet some of them felt that Bartomeu was not trusted at this moment, and that at the end of their period in Barcelona they might find themselves held accountable for sums they knew nothing about, and tried for crimes They did not commit it.

"Bartomeu not only has a huge power in the club, but his influence has reached the point of marginalizing the rest of the council itself."

This is what another source told "The Athletic", and even after the recent batch of resignations, Bartomeo promoted another group of his most loyal and loyal followers, simply because he needed all possible support in light of another sudden entry on the line, one that changed all the economic equations. In the club;

Covid-19.

One year ago, Bartomeu was bragging that Barcelona was the first sporting entity in history whose annual revenues - not profits - exceeded the one billion euros mark, but he forgot to tell everyone about the standard salary bill in turn, and after the outbreak of the pandemic, the financial condition of the club was affected to a fantastic degree because of the same bill that deducts Half of its total revenue and more.

The solution?

The same solution that Bartomeu is familiar with;

The use of "I3 Ventures" again to discredit the big players in the team and leak news to local newspapers about their opposition to reducing their salaries, headed by Messi of course.

The severity of the crisis required forcing the players to accept all of Bartomeo's financial conditions and without negotiations, and this would not have been possible without pressuring them on the media and showing them in the form of fat cats that are not concerned with the masses or even the rest of the club's employees.

Messi dealt with the crisis very smartly, hoping that this incident would be recorded as conclusive evidence of all the lies issued by the local newspapers regarding the players afterwards, and Bartomeu's full control over it, but even reducing the salaries of the stars by up to 70%, as Messi assured, was not enough to save The club suffered from huge losses due to "Covid-19", but what is worth noting was Messi's assertion in the two crises, the Abidal crisis and the salary crisis, "the necessity for everyone in the club to bear his responsibilities, and not to blame the players for every misfortune."

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A post shared by Leo Messi (@leomessi) on Mar 30, 2020 at 4:11 am PDT

After the Bayern scandal, events followed quickly to the point that it was impossible to stop studying it, and in this atmosphere prevail theories that confirm the previous biases of the masses, the biases that Bartomeu and his press and his media nurtured over the years, so everyone easily believed that Messi's desire to leave was due to Coman's appointment. Who kicked his friend Suarez from the club.

What actually happened was another round of strategic warfare between the administration on one side and the players on the other side.

Perhaps this is the only thing that is 100% certain;

That the war between the two sides has become declared.

The first round was Pique’s remarks immediately after the match about “the club’s need for a comprehensive change beyond the players and the coach,” and then Bartomeu responded in an interview with Spanish Channel Three on August 18 that “Barcelona's problem is sports, not administrative or institutional.”

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Among the statements of Pique and Bartomeu's response, a very important tweet emerged from Marcelo Pichler, the reliable journalist regarding the news of the Latin players in Barcelona, ​​as he tweeted on August 16 that Messi had decided to leave the team and informed his teammates.

This was before Bartomeu made any decisions regarding Koeman's appointment or even the departure of Suarez, undermining this theory from its foundation.

Atenção para a notícia: Messi quer deixar o Barcelona.

Não em 2021. Agora.

pic.twitter.com/XTcJwYIa2s

- Marcelo Bechler (@marcelobechler) August 16, 2020

What happened next was a very complicated game of chess;

Suarez's lawyer comes out to confirm that he is shocked by the decision to exclude the Uruguayan, stressing that his fate and Messi's fate are linked to each other and cannot be distinguished.

A statement that appears to be a bogus statement because it is the statement that Bartomeu needs exactly at this moment, to delude everyone that the problem, the whole problem, is Messi's influence in the club and his desire to keep Suarez.

In fact, Alejandro Balbi was nothing but the former lawyer of Suarez, and then Suarez came out to confirm that he "does not understand why some people speak in his name while he has not had any relationship with them for years," stressing that he "will speak by himself if he wants to talk."

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At the same moment, news comes out about Messi's desire to take advantage of the condition that grants him a free departure, which is very strange news confirmed by many reliable sources, strange because Messi knows full well that if he leaves, the transfer will not be a major obstacle.

Of course, no club will pay the 700 million euros stipulated in his contract because Messi can leave for free after one year and sign officially within 6 months, so Barcelona is forced to negotiate so as not to lose everything.

Even thinking that Messi wanted to leave without pay to get a bigger salary is not logical, simply because the biggest problem will be Messi's current salary of 50 million euros, tax-free.

This amount will be a huge burden on the budget of any club because it must be paid in full each season, while the transfer can be paid in installments over the period of the contract and reduce its impact on the annual budget, which the news says could reach 5 years, 3 of them with Manchester City and 2 with New York City. , The son club of the City Group in the United States.

Messi quer jogar no Manchester City.

Trata a saída do Barcelona como algo que dói na alma, mas o fim de um ciclo pic.twitter.com/FVMPDvB7Go

- Marcelo Bechler (@marcelobechler) August 26, 2020

This condition, which means leaving for free, has prompted many to think about its significance, including Laporta, who tweeted a few days ago, saying that he believed Barcelona "wants to sell Messi".

After that, several reports were issued confirming the idea, and saying that there is a good possibility that the sale of Messi was Bartomeo's plan from the beginning, regardless of the Bayern scandal.

Why?

Not to return Neymar and build a new team in the remaining few months until next March, of course, but to save his neck is the character.

(20)

The situation is now as follows;

The "Covid-19" crisis not only forced Bartomeu to withdraw from joining any new deals, but also put the whole club in a huge impasse with which the usual tricks will not work. Even after the suspicious Artur-Pjanic swap, Barcelona is still unable to balance its accounts, and this gives The next council has the right to review it and hold Bartomeu and his board accountable before the judiciary for the debts accumulated over the past years, and this may result in either the trial of Bartomeu and his council, or their compulsion to compensate the debts from their own pockets, so the expression "save his neck" was not metaphorical.

(3)

Of course, Barcelona would not be in debt with such huge sums if Bartomeu had any artistic vision that would qualify him to spend more than 400 million euros on 3 players such as Griezmann, Coutinho and Dembele, players who would not have brought him half this number if he decided to sell them now.

So the local pro-man newspapers of Catalonia have come out in the past few days to herald another exchange deal between Barcelona and Atlété, involving Griezmann and João Felix, and on the same suspicious terms with which the exchange of Artur Pjanic took place.

Barcelona will get a player with a very high value and then record the amount on the accounts of the ending fiscal year etc.

(21)

No one is lighter or more impudent than the local Catalan newspapers;

These are people who announce the news of the contract with Griezmann as a clear opening, then silence for an entire year and then tell you that the club has become obliged to exchange it with Joao Felix without telling you what happened between this and that, and how the shown opening turned into another suspicious deal to balance accounts.

These are people who are not ashamed because they know very well that the only reason to exchange Griezmann for Felix Donna for others is the fact that the Atleti spent roughly the same number to include the Portuguese, and this is what is required to achieve a financial balance, as for Felix's technical specifications, his most appropriate position, and serious doubts about his fitness level and the fact that he is offering The best he has is when he plays at Messi, all of which are not important at the moment, even if it was the same things that led to the failure of Griezmann's deal in the first place.

All Bartomeo is thinking now is saving his neck because the experience has reached such a point of failure that hope for anything else is unrealistic.

(22)

The funny thing is that Bartomeu asserted that the main person responsible for the sporting crisis is the club’s president in person, and that the players do not have the right to appoint coaches or decide deals, and then exclude everyone but himself. He dismissed the sports director and the coach and wages an open war with the players, while he will remain until the end of his term In blasphemy is clear against logic.

The calamity is that this situation has two explanations for them only.

Either Messi and the players already possess this amount of power and influence, and they decide everything with the sports director and coach, and thus the departure of Bartomeu becomes a duty before their departure, simply because he allowed this situation for years, or Bartomeu is the controller as he says, and then it would be in vain to say He was entrusted with repair work.

From here the truth began to become evident little by little.

Bartomeu does not care about fixing the team and this was not the purpose of contracting with Coman in the first place, Bartomeo wanted to fabricate a position that he could use to justify the sale of Messi, a position in which Messi appears exactly as Bartomeo wants to portray him;

A spoiled, corrupt, unprofessional player who prefers his personal interest, and even the interest of his friends, over the interest of the team, simply because selling Messi is the only solution to balancing the club's accounts before the next elections.

Selling Messi is the only solution for Bartomeu to avoid the same trap he set up for the Laporta board when he took office in 2010.

The tool Bartomeu used to achieve this is Koeman, and the promises he made to the Dutchman are free promises that he will definitely not be able to fulfill.

Barcelona does not have the resources to sign any of the names proposed by Coman according to the Catalan press, not even Vinaldom, who will come on a free transfer from Liverpool, simply because Vinaldum's desire to leave for free from Liverpool was aimed at obtaining a huge salary as his last contract at this level, A salary that Barcelona simply won't afford.

Messi will save Bartomeo more than 100 million euros in exchange for a transfer, then he will deduct another 100, or approximately 20% of his annual salary bill (Messi's salary amounts to 100 million euros by adding taxes of up to 100% on this category of income), And most importantly, Bartomeu will not need to make any deals to replace him, simply because this is what he has been doing over the past years;

All the players Bartomeu hired were their team stars, and their main problem at Barcelona was that they perform better when they play in the same space that Messi plays as a playmaker and No. 10. In fact, we wouldn't blame you if you thought that hiring all of these was one way to pressure them. Messi to take it out.

If the man had the slightest artistic vision, he would have spent the same money on more suitable players and everything would go its normal course from there;

More suitable players lead to a better team, the better team achieves better results, and better results would have kept the trophies and titles flowing, and by extension keep Messi happy, feeling that the last years of his years are not wasted in a team that does nothing but contract with players who dispute him over his space on the field instead of helping him He does nothing but contract more zlatan.

Most likely, this is the reason why Messi wants to leave for free, because he did not want his departure to be a rescue for Bartomeu from everything he did during the past years.

All this does not exempt Messi and the players from responsibility, but rather makes them partners in it, whether by silence or by receiving disguised bribes in the form of huge contracts to silence what Bartomeu is doing in the rest of the club's sectors, including the academy that was destroyed and ignored for a whole decade.

All this is taken for granted and there is no room for debate, but, at the same time, it denies him and the rest of the players the alleged power to make decisions.

One last scene is so ugly, so ugly that searching for its first official no longer works.

What Bartomeu did with the club's structure and build is similar to what exactly happened on the stadium;

He created a huge void around the most important player he owned, a vacuum in which Messi was forced to expand to save the team from losing its most important pillars one by one without real compensation, until the team became Messi and two or three other players.

We do not know if this is what happened off the field as well or not, and whether or not this happened, we find it very difficult to accept the fact that the destruction of Barcelona in the final scene with a defeat by the eight will result in the departure of the sports director, coach and players while Bartomeu remains.

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Sources