Reports in France suggest Lionel Messi is on the verge of walking out of PSG and back to his spiritual home of Barcelona. But could it really happen?
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00:00 Reports coming out of France today suggest that Lionel Messi could be set to turn down
00:07 a new contract offer, walk out on Paris Saint-Germain and set up a dramatic reunion with his old
00:12 club Barcelona.
00:13 Bonjour everybody, Adam Cleary 442 here and this Lionel Messi situation is going to rumble
00:19 on all summer, you can bet your life on that, but what actually is it?
00:25 Could he leave and could he go back to Barcelona?
00:27 Well, it's complicated.
00:28 Alright, so first off the facts here, Lionel Messi signs for PSG in 2021 after Barcelona
00:34 basically run out of money to pay him.
00:36 That's an incredibly oversimplified version of what actually happened, he did have some
00:39 reservations, he was thinking about leaving anyway, then his contract expired and he was
00:43 going to sign a new one but he physically didn't have the money for it and he couldn't
00:46 register him, it was a total mess, he became a free agent.
00:49 PSG were at the time the richest club on the planet and they swept in, got him on a free
00:53 and unveiled him to the shock of the entire world.
00:56 Now the idea here for PSG was after going out in the final and semi-final of the last
01:01 two Champions Leagues, Messi would be the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that would
01:05 help them win the one competition they so badly coveted.
01:08 And while they were able to reclaim the League-er title in his first season at the club and
01:12 will probably just win it again this year, they've gone out in the round of 16 during
01:16 his two Champions League campaigns.
01:18 That's not good, that's not what you pay Ā£25.6 million a year for.
01:23 Now those two years are up at the end of this season, where does the time go my friends?
01:28 But PSG still seeing him as the jewel in their crown, want him to renew for one more.
01:33 And it was believed, nay reported, that at some point during the World Cup, Messi's
01:37 father had said to the PSG president, "He's going to stay another year, we intend to sign."
01:42 Great PSG thought, we've got our man, we don't have to worry about anything, but
01:45 then, oh no, football happened.
01:47 Now I'm sure you didn't miss this at the time, but Lionel Messi went and won the World
01:51 Cup, the one trophy that had evaded him in his time as a player.
01:54 And I know none of us can speak from experience here, but you would imagine achieving the
01:57 one personal goal you have as an individual does tend to refocus your opinion about what
02:03 you're trying to do as part of a team.
02:05 And this is where, if you'll pardon the pun, it gets quite messy, because since the
02:08 World Cup, since Messi won that tournament, talks on renewing his contract to PSG have
02:12 almost gone completely silent.
02:15 And understandably, PSG fans who were quite divided on him to begin with and now feel
02:19 like they're being messed about have taken to jeering and booing him at their home games.
02:30 Paris may well be the city of love, my friends, but you get on their bad side, it very quickly
02:34 becomes the city of "vater faire foute".
02:37 So you take the jeering fans on one side, the inability to get anywhere in the Champions
02:41 League on the other, Messi achieving the one thing he'd set out to do, and the reports
02:45 that PSG have asked him to take a 25% pay cut on his ā¬25 million a year salary, and
02:50 you can sort of see why this strained marriage is probably going to collapse.
02:55 And this, absolutely ages into the news video, is where Barcelona come along.
02:59 We've all had an ex, right, that neither of you ever quite move on from.
03:02 Well that is Messi and Barcelona.
03:04 They did so much together, they will just always be a thing.
03:07 But you see, the financial problems that forced Messi to leave Barcelona in the first place
03:11 haven't exactly gone away, and are in many respects quite worse now.
03:15 But they've had plenty of time to pull those imaginary levers they seem to have, and it's
03:19 been reported that they are working with several major sponsors to be able to fund Messi's
03:24 return.
03:25 It's also been reported that Messi would have to take a fairly substantial pay cut to go
03:27 to Barcelona as well, but just put yourself in that situation, you're Lionel Messi, you're
03:32 going to be losing money anyway, would you rather do it in Paris where everybody hates
03:35 you, or in Barcelona, where everybody loves you, and you've won it all, and you're an
03:40 icon of the club, and your family would much prefer to live in, and you can drink those
03:43 little cans of damn limon on the beach.
03:46 Now of course there's an entire other story in this about whether or not Messi going back
03:49 to Barcelona at 37, just as Javi Hernandez appears to be getting him to play a fairly
03:53 cohesive brand of football with an exciting squad of emerging young talent and a few experienced
03:57 heads to guide them, but that would be another video entirely.
04:00 Hmm.
04:01 But as I say, this is a story that will simply not go away all summer, I can guarantee you
04:05 that, so now you are forewarned, and forewarned is of course, Smug in the Pub.
04:09 Anyway let us know what you make of it in the comments below, should Messi go back to
04:12 Barcelona, should he stay at PSG, should he go somewhere else, should he go to your club,
04:15 should he go to Wrexham, let us know how that would play out, all opinions welcome.
04:19 In the meantime though, thank you so much for watching, I've of course been Adam Cleary,
04:22 this has been 442, and we'll see you real soon, bye!