Lionel Messi Is Leaving PSG This Summer
Reports in France suggest Lionel Messi is on the verge of walking out of PSG and back to his spiritual home of Barcelona. But could it really happen?
Transcript
00:00 Reports coming out of France today suggest that Lionel Messi could be set to turn down
00:07 a new contract offer, walk out on Paris Saint-Germain and set up a dramatic reunion with his old
00:12 club Barcelona.
00:13 Bonjour everybody, Adam Cleary 442 here and this Lionel Messi situation is going to rumble
00:19 on all summer, you can bet your life on that, but what actually is it?
00:25 Could he leave and could he go back to Barcelona?
00:27 Well, it's complicated.
00:28 Alright, so first off the facts here, Lionel Messi signs for PSG in 2021 after Barcelona
00:34 basically run out of money to pay him.
00:36 That's an incredibly oversimplified version of what actually happened, he did have some
00:39 reservations, he was thinking about leaving anyway, then his contract expired and he was
00:43 going to sign a new one but he physically didn't have the money for it and he couldn't
00:46 register him, it was a total mess, he became a free agent.
00:49 PSG were at the time the richest club on the planet and they swept in, got him on a free
00:53 and unveiled him to the shock of the entire world.
00:56 Now the idea here for PSG was after going out in the final and semi-final of the last
01:01 two Champions Leagues, Messi would be the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that would
01:05 help them win the one competition they so badly coveted.
01:08 And while they were able to reclaim the League-er title in his first season at the club and
01:12 will probably just win it again this year, they've gone out in the round of 16 during
01:16 his two Champions League campaigns.
01:18 That's not good, that's not what you pay £25.6 million a year for.
01:23 Now those two years are up at the end of this season, where does the time go my friends?
01:28 But PSG still seeing him as the jewel in their crown, want him to renew for one more.
01:33 And it was believed, nay reported, that at some point during the World Cup, Messi's
01:37 father had said to the PSG president, "He's going to stay another year, we intend to sign."
01:42 Great PSG thought, we've got our man, we don't have to worry about anything, but
01:45 then, oh no, football happened.
01:47 Now I'm sure you didn't miss this at the time, but Lionel Messi went and won the World
01:51 Cup, the one trophy that had evaded him in his time as a player.
01:54 And I know none of us can speak from experience here, but you would imagine achieving the
01:57 one personal goal you have as an individual does tend to refocus your opinion about what
02:03 you're trying to do as part of a team.
02:05 And this is where, if you'll pardon the pun, it gets quite messy, because since the
02:08 World Cup, since Messi won that tournament, talks on renewing his contract to PSG have
02:12 almost gone completely silent.
02:15 And understandably, PSG fans who were quite divided on him to begin with and now feel
02:19 like they're being messed about have taken to jeering and booing him at their home games.
02:30 Paris may well be the city of love, my friends, but you get on their bad side, it very quickly
02:34 becomes the city of "vater faire foute".
02:37 So you take the jeering fans on one side, the inability to get anywhere in the Champions
02:41 League on the other, Messi achieving the one thing he'd set out to do, and the reports
02:45 that PSG have asked him to take a 25% pay cut on his €25 million a year salary, and
02:50 you can sort of see why this strained marriage is probably going to collapse.
02:55 And this, absolutely ages into the news video, is where Barcelona come along.
02:59 We've all had an ex, right, that neither of you ever quite move on from.
03:02 Well that is Messi and Barcelona.
03:04 They did so much together, they will just always be a thing.
03:07 But you see, the financial problems that forced Messi to leave Barcelona in the first place
03:11 haven't exactly gone away, and are in many respects quite worse now.
03:15 But they've had plenty of time to pull those imaginary levers they seem to have, and it's
03:19 been reported that they are working with several major sponsors to be able to fund Messi's
03:24 return.
03:25 It's also been reported that Messi would have to take a fairly substantial pay cut to go
03:27 to Barcelona as well, but just put yourself in that situation, you're Lionel Messi, you're
03:32 going to be losing money anyway, would you rather do it in Paris where everybody hates
03:35 you, or in Barcelona, where everybody loves you, and you've won it all, and you're an
03:40 icon of the club, and your family would much prefer to live in, and you can drink those
03:43 little cans of damn limon on the beach.
03:46 Now of course there's an entire other story in this about whether or not Messi going back
03:49 to Barcelona at 37, just as Javi Hernandez appears to be getting him to play a fairly
03:53 cohesive brand of football with an exciting squad of emerging young talent and a few experienced
03:57 heads to guide them, but that would be another video entirely.
04:00 Hmm.
04:01 But as I say, this is a story that will simply not go away all summer, I can guarantee you
04:05 that, so now you are forewarned, and forewarned is of course, Smug in the Pub.
04:09 Anyway let us know what you make of it in the comments below, should Messi go back to
04:12 Barcelona, should he stay at PSG, should he go somewhere else, should he go to your club,
04:15 should he go to Wrexham, let us know how that would play out, all opinions welcome.
04:19 In the meantime though, thank you so much for watching, I've of course been Adam Cleary,
04:22 this has been 442, and we'll see you real soon, bye!