Joan Laporta, the recent former Barcelona president standing for re-election, has opened up about the rocky nature of his relationship with Lionel Messi, who saw a potential return to Catalonia quashed after leaving the club in 2021.
Laporta had only recently taken on the post of president when he was forced to tell Messi that there was no way for the club to renew his contract and stay within La Liga’s financial regulations. The Argentine icon clearly did not take the news well and is yet to build any bridges with the businessman.
“My relationship with Messi is not what it used to be,” Laporta told Cataluyna Ràdio this week during his campaign for re-election. “There was also an incident at the Ballon d’Or ceremony where I went to greet him and he felt we should not greet each other.
“From that point on, there have been some attempts to reconnect, and we hope that happens again in the future. The relationship is damaged, but he is a myth of Barcelona.”
Laporta’s rivals for the presidency have poured salt into this open wound in a bid to embolden their own campaigns. Yet, Messi hasn’t publicly endorsed any candidate and is not expected to do so ahead of March’s election.
In an attempt to offer an olive branch to the club icon, Laporta has doubled down on his insistence on a fulsome dedication for Messi. “Leo deserves a statue at Camp Nou like [Johan] Cruyff and [László] Kubala have,” Laporta reiterated. “He deserves a tribute, and we believe the right moment to do it will be when the stadium is fully completed and holds more than 100,000 spectators.”
Messi’s Failed Return to Barcelona
The rewriting of history has seen the summer of 2020 conveniently erased from Messi’s myth. A year before Laporta took to office and oversaw the No. 10’s exit, Messi himself went public with his desire to leave Barcelona, submitting an official legal document—that infamous “burofax”—to inform the club of his wishes.
There was one year left on his contract at the time and the Catalan giants, still reeling from the financial realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, were in no position to give up their greatest player of all time for free. Fast forward 12 months and the roles had switched.
Laporta has subsequently revealed that Barcelona underwent the process of trying to find a way of extending Messi’s contract in the summer of 2021. “When negotiating the renewal, I had a pretty demanding team, and although his father was more understanding, his inner circle gave the impression that he wasn’t,” the former president wrote in his new book, modestly titled, This Is How We Saved Barça, which has been serialized by MARCA.
“We came up with a crazy solution: a long-term contract with an initial stint as a Barça player and a second on loan to an MLS team, something that seemed to circumvent La Liga’s rules,” Laporta sensationally claimed. “But La Liga told us to forget it, that we had to sign an agreement to sell a percentage of the television rights for 50 years through a fund called CVC.”
No other wacky alternative could be found and Messi tearfully made his way to Paris Saint-Germain. After two largely unhappy seasons in the French capital, the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner was once again a free agent in the summer of 2023.
Laporta has claimed that he once again reached out to Messi’s father Jorge to find a way of bringing back the diminutive deity. “Jorge Messi came to my house, I prepared the contract, I sent him the draft, and he didn’t reply,” the former president revealed.
“A week went by, then two ... a month later, he finally came back to my house and told me they had decided to go to Inter Miami, where he wouldn’t be under so much pressure.”
At the time, Messi explained his decision was made with the consequences of what his return would entail for those already at Barcelona. “I heard that Barcelona had to sell players or lower player salaries and the truth is that I didn’t want to go through that,” he revealed.
“I really wanted to return, I was very excited to be able to return, but, on the other hand, after having experienced what I experienced when I left, I didn’t want to be in the same situation again. I didn’t want to leave my future in someone else’s hands.” Specifically, Laporta’s hands.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Lionel Messi’s Brutal Snub of Barcelona Boss, ‘Crazy’ Rejected Return Plan Revealed.
