Leaked details of Lionel Messi ’s contract extension talks with Barcelona in 2020 have shown the player’s private jet requirements and a special request regarding close friend Luis Suarez.
The Argentine superstar was in talks over extending his stay at the Catalan club two years ago, prior to him attempting to walk out of the club in the same summer. He ultimately stayed put before leaving the following year to join Paris Saint-Germain on a two-year contract.
A year prior to his Camp Nou exit, Messi was in talks to put pen to paper on a new contract before unsuccessfully trying to force his exit from the club by submitting a burofax – a legal document common in Spain.
Details of his contract demands to Barca have been leaked by Spanish newspaper El Mundo, who have obtained a series of emails between the player’s father and agent, Jorge Mendes, his lawyers and then-Barcelona’s president Josep Maria Bartomeu and then-CEO Oscar Grau.
All of Messi’s requests were accepted by the club, apart from the Argentine’s demand to remove his €700million (£613m) release clause. Instead, the player wanted to have a symbolic €10,000 (£8,750) release should he wish to leave the club at any time – a reality which played out months later.
There were a series of requests that Messi made to the club, including demanding that his family had access to a luxury box at Camp Nou. Furthermore, he wished for his friend Luis Suarez – who at that stage was still a teammate at the Blaugrana before leaving for Atletico Madrid – to have the same access for a separate box at the stadium.
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Messi was also determined for the club to allow him access to a private jet, which he would be able to utilise to fly him and his family to and from Argentina for the Christmas holidays.
Furthermore, Messi wanted a €10m (£8.75m) signing on bonus for agreeing a new deal and recovering the wage cut that he had agreed during the pandemic with an interest rate of three per cent. He had wanted his 20 per cent fixed salary reduction in the 2020/21 campaign to be boosted by two separate increases of 10 per cent across the next two seasons, alongside the interest rate.
Messi's father wrote in one of the emails sent to Alfonso Nebot, director of the office that manages the superstar's wealth, as the talks broke down: "Let them feel the weight of the sword on their head." That was the series of events that led to Messi’s demand to leave the club that summer.
