Messi swallowed poison in silence. Every game that ended with PSG fans whistling for him, he took a deep breath and quickened his pace toward the locker room. Never a defiant gesture. Never a rudeness of those that we could imagine in Diego if they came to whistle. He added arguments to make his decision. And meanwhile, he took advantage of the escape routes that the calendar gave him. He enjoyed every minute of the tribute tour in Argentina at the end of March. When he saw the hole, he took a plane and went to his house in Spain to go out to dinner as a couple with his former colleagues. Or to ride a bike in his neighborhood.
He never left Barcelona. He lives there and works in Paris. In all those comings and goings, between hugs and attacks depending on the country where he took to the field, he thought and felt. Some time ago, then, he began to lean towards not renewing the contract with the French club that expires on June 30.. About to turn 36, the best footballer in the world can choose where to play. And PSG knows it. After all this sequence, coincidentally, they pushed him into a “misconduct” to confront him who’s boss and for a few days to be the punching ball of the fans and local newspapers. At another time, it was resolved with a face-to-face talk and zero noise to the outside world. Without controversy or a video of Messi apologizing in public to his teammates and the club, precisely with whom he can communicate in private. A typical attitude of a powerful scorned.
There was a specific conflict these days. Messi had planned a trip to Saudi Arabia for business reasons. I had already notified the club. Someone with 458 million followers on Instagram can’t make a lying excuse for missing a workout. And Leo is not one of the rebels who take a plane because he does not accept no. In any case, the PSG sheikhs seem to be reacting because he doesn’t say yes to them… Since the team lost the weekend, the day of practice was changed when Leo could no longer suspend the event again. It is evident that a fight was sought for all to see. Or to get rid of the desire to fight, another common reaction to a divorce the hard way. Today it is a populist play in a context with fans who insult on the field and where a camera focuses on them. While most teams in the world want their 10 to be Leo, they kick him out. And they are so “organized” to show “their genuine discontent” that the same day that everything explodes they are going to sing against Neymar at his house and it would not be surprising if they go to Messi’s door. In short, they will be able to question that with Leo they did not win their first Champions League and both times they were violently eliminated. They may suffer because he took the last World Cup out of their hands and they did not celebrate with their pampered Mbappé, logical for being the local idol. They can even say, as happened in other times between the club and the National Team, that after Qatar he did not perform at the supreme level he played here. As Marcelo Gallardo once exposed, let’s not become patriots in Argentina. Now, from there to question him because of his professionalism, not even the most against the readers of L’Equipe believe it.
Today the photos of Messi’s first presentation as reinforcement of a team were far away, his appearance at the airport with the shirt that said Ici C’est Paris, the happy smile that dried the tears of the conference he gave when he left Barça . Messi lost his joy there and his photo with the Eiffel Tower will be with a certain nostalgia. His goal now is to give them the local tournament again, be Ligue 1 champion like in 2022, and leave without fighting. In that mode and tone Messi, published in a story on his social network in which he apologizes twice. There, there was not even an irony against the leaders or rebellion against the possible sanction. There was, neither, a demagogic nod to the people who resist him. Nothing seemed casual. “First of all, obviously apologize to my teammates, to the club. I honestly thought that we were going to have free time, as had been happening in the previous weeks. Apologize for what I did and here I am, waiting for what the club decides. Nothing else. A hug, ”said Messi, after taking a second breath and dressed in a dark suit, more as if he were a boy who apologized at school than the great figure of world football in conflict. Leo prefers to have peace before reason. Intimately, he doesn’t like that they want to draw mustaches on his poster, but he has no problem feeding the egos of capricious millionaires with a pardon in a video of just over 30 seconds. He seems to be beyond. That, so difficult to accept for little earthly types, is to look from above without being arrogant.
The fight is not fuel for Messi. He doesn’t make up enemies or scan around him to see if he can find them. In fact, after the World Cup, already more serene, he admitted that he did not like to see himself in the discussion with Weghorst. The historic “go there, fool” against the Dutch striker came naturally to him, with his body still vibrating, he was as much from Rosario as he was from Maradona, but afterwards Leo was not proud. While the phrase became a T-shirt, he himself questioned the moment without exaggerating.
And the other remembered counterpoint is when he kicked against Conmebol, in the Copa América Brazil 2019, after a super local arbitration. They gave him a three-month sanction and a $50,000 fine for his disruptive statements. That Messi-Conmebol relationship was restored so much, that a little while ago he went with the entire National Team to Paraguay to enjoy the tribute that was paid to them and a life-size statue of 10 was uncovered that led Argentina to its third star on the shirt. Another possibility is that the apology now has been part of an idea agreed upon with the club to reduce tension in the situation and that there is an alibi to leave the two weeks of suspension only as a threat. Without a shirt, so Messi showed more common sense than PSG and more humility than anyone. He forces PSG to also show flexibility. If it was part of a negotiation, as it sounds, the counterpart would be to reverse the firework of the sanction.
The next step, once this episode becomes an anecdote, is where will Messi play next season. On his phone, which rarely leaves his hand, he has news from Barcelona and it’s not the best. Returning to the club that saw him literally grow up, and with Xavi as coach, would be the most obvious end of his film’s screenwriter. It is not so simple. Or actually it got difficult again. Leo could overcome coexistence, or actually cross paths, with Laporta. The issue is the financial Fair Play of a club that is weak in papers. Everything can change, but today he is closer to putting on that shirt for a tribute game to the best player in his history than one for points. That is the moment in which the 10 must open his map and define with his family, because it will not only be a new football project but a life project. There the idea of accepting a multimillion-dollar offer from Arabia is crossed out, even though these days the photos there with Antonela and her two youngest children are viral. Messi is not taken off axis by any number. And he also loses strength the illusion of having him six months in Argentina so that he has an itinerant tribute in all fields. It would be that time to then start the season in the United States, where the next World Cup will be played in part and it was always known about Inter Miami and Beckham. In that club he shouldn’t just be a player but he could buy part of the franchise and live in a place where he has gone on vacation. It would be necessary to see, then, what is Messi’s next shirt. The only concrete thing at that point is that he would like to compete once more to win something big in Europe. In a place without whistles or conflicts. A club where they only apologize for making a fool of the rival markers…
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