Messi maelstrom has plunged Barcelona into chaos, but it's a crisis of their own making

Lionel Messi steps into a room filled with socially distanced reporters, phones in hand and thumbs at the ready, eagerly waiting to hear the six-time Ballon d’Or winner announce his next club. Barcelona’s rivals are enjoying this spectacular turn of events with a touch of schadenfreude.

*Record scratch* 

*Freeze frame*

“You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation,” the Barcelona club captain says to the camera.

The Argentine wizard has already pressed the nuclear button at the Nou Camp, sparking a frenzy on social media on a day that started with Harry Maguire being convicted of assault and attempted bribery of a police official, and ended with Lionel Messi dropping a bombshell on Barcelona via a burofax.

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Barcelona board in disarray as Messi makes intentions clear

There are summers of upheaval and then there’s this. The man who has dominated LaLiga since what appears to be forever informed the club this week that he intends to draw curtains on his two-decade-long stay in Barcelona. A mere six months earlier, according to The Athletic, the club’s much-maligned president Josep Maria Bartomeu proclaimed to a group of prominent Catalan businessmen, “Barca is the top sporting brand in the world.”

To trace the origins of the crisis that has engulfed the club, Josep Maria Bartomeu and the Barcelona board in recent months, a quick walk down memory lane is of the essence. Back in 2008, with Pep Guardiola showing Ronaldinho the door, Messi’s pay was bumped up to a reported €8 million with another €4.5 million in incentives, making him the club’s highest earner.

Nearly every year since, Messi’s contract has been revised. Massive pay bump followed monumental figures and cut to 2020, the club captain finds himself earning north of €100 million a season. While these numbers may be justified for arguably the best player on the planet, taking a cue from his frequent pay revisions, other Barcelona stars followed suit. Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, Gerard Pique all negotiated new contracts, with Busquets reportedly threatening an exit back in 2016. Such has been the culture of negotiation at the club.

All the while, Barcelona won six of the 10 LaLiga titles on offer and two Champions Leagues this decade, along with the usual serving of Copa del Reys and Spanish Super Cups.

Over on the financial side of the Nou Camp, to say that the club is in chaos would do little justice to the scale of the financial maelstrom. Neymar’s sale to PSG in 2017 fetched a world-record fee of €222 million but the Barcelona board opted to spend the money nearly as soon as it came in. That money saw Ousmane Dembele (€105 million) arrive the same year, with Philippe Coutinho (€160 million) and Antoine Griezmann (€120 million) arriving in subsequent years. These figures compounded the fact that the club spent nearly €1 billion in transfer fees since 2014. How many signings have since justified that outlay remains a question to be answered.

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In Barcelona, Lionel Messi walks on water. After surrendering the title to Real Madrid post the restart, he gave a brutally honest review of their season and claimed they had little chance of beating Napoli in the last-16 of the Champions League. That Messi once again carried the club on his shoulders past Napoli served only to delay the inevitable. The writing was on the wall. Messi had pointed to it.

The Bayern Munich humiliation that served as the last straw 

The quarter-finals saw them face Bayern, though that was less of a football game and more of a mauling. At the end of that night in Lisbon, Barcelona begged to be put out of their misery, the 8-2 humiliation another in the long line of volcanic Champions League failures. In the corridor of the Estadio da Luz in Portugal, Messi sat distraught; a beaten man still coming to grips with how the LaLiga giants fell so meekly to a side that was dealing with a crisis in the first half of the campaign. The writing on the wall screamed that night.

That was the last straw. Change was needed. Pique was the first to lay down a marker, asking for wholesale changes and not just with the coach or a player. A little reading between the lines underlined the feeling in the dressing room. This was a group of players broken, bruised and battered. "I will be the first to offer to go if we need new blood,” Pique stated.

After boardroom scuffles, public airing of laundry (read: Abidal controversy, pay cuts, social media smear campaigns) and a gradual weakening of the club’s potential, Messi found himself at a crossroads. Stick or twist? Dig deep or go nuclear? Messi chose to twist. He pressed the nuclear button.

The burofax Messi sent to the club rocked the sport. All eyes turned to Spain as Messi demanded an exit, citing a clause that allows him to leave on a free at the end of the season. The club argues that the deadline for the clause has passed and potential bidders will need to cough up €700 million. A Mexican standoff in Catalonia.

While there is every possibility that this could end ugly, this is undeniably the end of an era. Not quite the ending Messi deserves, but an ending nonetheless. The six-time Ballon d’Or winner is now looking at greener pastures where he can express himself in the Champions League and avoid being part of a painful rebuild at the club he has given two decades of his life to.

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Is this the end for Barcelona or Messi though?

A huge part of this showdown has been the numbers in Messi’s contract. North of €100 million in wages every year is a mammoth amount that the club could do without in these circumstances. The Barcelona board still needs to raise substantial funds to balance the books, a situation that saw them force Arthur Melo out the club with Miralem Pjanic his curious replacement. Failure of the board to balance the books could see Article 67 come into play. The Article 67 of the club statutes dictates that the board must resign if debts amount to twice the EBITDA (Earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortisation) in consecutive seasons.

For Messi, the work of carrying the club on his shoulders has taken a pound of flesh. His exit frees up a considerable amount of finances, regardless of whether he leaves on a free transfer. Messi’s departure also frees up space on the pitch for two of their record signings – Coutinho and Griezmann. Coutinho shone early in his Barcelona career as he replaced the injured Messi but found himself shunted out when Messi recovered. Griezmann has fallen victim to a similar quandary. With no space on the pitch as a floating No. 10, the 2018 World Cup winner has found himself on the wings more often, struggling to have an impact with the €120 million weighing heavy.

Ronald Koeman is himself a club legend and is already wielding an iron fist in a manner similar to Guardiola back in 2008. Barcelona do have the resources to cope with Messi’s absence. Their status as a superclub (regretfully) allows them to make monumental mistakes but still come out strong in the face of their in-house special serving of adversity.

Messi is unlikely to get the procession he deserves. His last game in Barcelona colours could very well be the 8-2 demolition job at the hands of Bayern. He had a front-row seat to the genesis of the club’s financial troubles but also has his fate in his hands. For the story of a genius like Messi, this is a brutal denouement. The Nietzschean superman that he is, though, he will land on his feet, and that’s where he works his magic.

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Image Courtesy: AP