MADRID (AP) – Barcelona still abandoned Lionel Messi.
A day after the wonderful Argentine announced to the club that he sought to leave, Barcelona said his restructuring plan still targeted the player.
“We need to rebuild long-term with the most productive player in history,” Ramon Planes, the club’s technical director, said Wednesday. “We don’t make any contractual outlets because we need you to stay. We have to show massive respect to Messi because he’s the most productive player in the world.”
The planes spoke when Barcelona officially brought forward Francisco Trinco on an occasion that was already scheduled before Messi announced his departure on Tuesday.
“We turned it into a dispute between Leo Messi and Barcelona because none of them deserve it,” Planes said.
Barcelona is looking to avoid a brutal end to Messi’s career at the club. His last match in the Blue Shirt was the embarrassing 8–2 defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-finals, one of the worst losses in the player’s career and in the club’s history.
But Messi has already made his decision, and it is only the consultation of how ugly the termination will be and whether Barcelona will take cash from it.
Dozens of fans demonstrated outdoors at the Camp Nou on Tuesday night to call for the resignation of the team’s president, Josep Bartomeu, and some broke into the stadium for a few minutes on Wednesday. They came in when the doors opened so a truck could get out. Protesters clashed with police for a while before retreating. They were a minority among the few hundred that accumulated outdoors in the stadium.
Club executives who had previously opposed Bartomeu had submitted a move calling for his resignation, hoping Messi would replace his mind.
“The stage was uncomfortable for everyone,” Barcelona fan Oriol Aznar said. “This directive has resigned a long time ago. Bad results, mismanagement. Nothing positive about them. They’re destroying the club. It’s general that Messi has to go. They need to end the year with a decent monetary balance if they make cash from Messi’s departure. But that’s not the way to do it.”
Messi’s first contract with the club signed on a towel after a lunch between his representatives and club leaders almost 20 years ago, however, is with a burofax, a qualified communication approach commonly used in Spain, similar to a telegram, that Messi has made. He told the club he had to leave.
There were no phone calls or meetings with the club leaders. Just the burofax.
In this, Messi invoked a clause in his contract that allowed him to leave free after the end of the season.
But Barcelona said that the clause discussed through Messi expired on June 10, the player did not meet the deadline and would have to pay the 700 million euro clause ($827 million) if he needs to leave before his contract ends in June 2021.
What Messi can argue is that the clause expired at the end of the season, which this year retreated by the coronavirus pandemic.
The club said he had responded to Messi’s burofax by saying he was looking for him to stay and finish his Barcelona career.
“Total war!” declared a headline on the Sport newspaper’s website on Wednesday.
“Goodthroughe through burofax,” the sports AS said.
Messi has openly opposed the club’s coaches during the season, but has not spoken publicly since the loss to Bayern.
Barcelona players are expected to come to the club on Sunday for coronavirus testing, and will resume on Monday in preparation for the Spanish league.
Former Barcelona player Rivaldo said he’s not happy for Messi to leave like this and that it would be difficult for the club if he didn’t get monetary compensation.
“At such a confusing moment as this, with the existing crisis, it would be a tragedy for Barcelona to lose its biggest star without receiving anything in return,” he said. “This is the biggest dispute between the parties at the moment, so I don’t expect a quick exit, especially after the exchange of burofax between them yesterday.
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