Madrid (AFP)
Josep Maria Bartomeu bent Lionel Messi who gave up leaving Barça on Friday, but the Catalan president, already highly contested before this affair, must prepare for a difficult 2020-21 exercise with in particular his Argentine superstar who will not fail to l 'scratch at the slightest opportunity.
"He broke his promise", "The president didn't pay attention to what I was saying" or "They just juggle and plug holes as things go by" : It is an understatement to say that Messi did not spare his president on Friday in his long truth interview with the specialized site Goal.com.
The six-fold Ballon d'Or justified his desire to leave his long-standing club by a catastrophic season on the ground, without a single trophy, but also by his bad relations with Bartomeu to whom he blames, jumbled, his disastrous choices in coaching and recruiting, and not having kept his word.
Since taking over from Sandro Rosell in January 2014, forced to resign following an investigation into Neymar's transfer, Bartomeu has certainly been re-elected in 2015, but has seen Barça gradually lose his place in the European gotha.
- Mixed economic results -
There was the hat-trick in the Spanish Championship and the Champions League in 2015 and four La Liga crowns in total (2015, 2016, 2018, 2019), but the Catalan ogre fell in the quarter-finals of the C1 four times, including this year against Bayern Munich after a historic rout (8-2), and once in the last four (3-0, 0-4 against Liverpool in 2019).
In the economic field, Bartomeu does not do better.
Barça is certainly the club that generates the highest revenues in the world (840.8 M EUR in 2018-2019 according to the firm Deloitte in its annual ranking), and hoped to be the first club to exceed the symbolic bar of one billion euros. of income this year ... But the pandemic has turned everything upside down.
Add the debt of nearly EUR 200m that Barça has deplored since 2019 according to the press, and one of the highest payrolls in the world (almost EUR 500m), and you have a club in difficulty. financial, which does not manage to give the real kick-off to the sumptuary development works of Camp Nou.
In this climate made even more difficult by the health crisis of the new coronavirus, which has hit Spain hard, and the drop in revenue (48 M EUR of shortfall for Camp Nou last season), the new season which will begin for Barça at the end of September against Villareal, may be complicated at all levels.
Messi would not have really enjoyed his first talks with the club's new coach Ronald Koeman.
Worse, the Dutch technician told Luis Suarez, a great friend of Messi in the Catalan workforce, that he no longer counted on him.
- Election in March?
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Messi could therefore quickly think of sailing towards new horizons if the first months are disappointing in sport.
And this time, nothing will be able to hold him back, since his contract expires at the end of June 2021.
From next January, there could be a new standoff: with Messi who would like to join, for example, Pep Guardiola in Manchester City and Barça who could recover several tens of millions of euros welcome in a delicate economic context, rather than nothing of the all six months later.
Unless the election of the new president, on a date yet to be specified - from mid-March as decided by Bartomeu after the rout against Bayern - resolves everything for Messi as for Barça.
If the current president is defeated, Barca could change era with a new coach who could be the iconic former midfielder Xavi Hernandez, expected by many as the savior.
To the point of convincing Messi, 33, to extend and make his entire career in the Blaugrana jersey?
The soap opera is far from over ...
© 2020 AFP