PSG recently announced that Messi would leave the club at the end of the season and the football world started speculating on his tentative return to Barcelona. After all, it would be a fairytale ending: Lionel Messi spending the last few days of his footballing career with a Blaugrana jersey on his back -- the jersey he imperiously donned for almost all of his footballing career.
But the relationship between the current Barcelona board and Messi has been sour, to say the least. The current president, Joan Laporta, came to power largely by using that Messi card. Victor Font, his opponent in the election had a decent project but Messi propaganda sells well in Barcelona. Though Laporta proved to be more of a realist after coming to power, forcing Messi to leave the club and justifying his actions with “club above everyone else.”
That was nothing short of betrayal to Messi who was assured by the club that he would be registered for the new season but at the end it turned out that Laporta took a U-turn and thought better of keeping Messi in the team. Parting ways with Barcelona being never in the cards for Messi, we saw a sobbing Messi in the farewell press conference promising that he would come back one day and that was not the last of him in Barcelona and so a desire and hope of reunion, a last dance always lingered among the fans.
However, his potential return to Barcelona was always complicated. The erstwhile biggest revenue generator of the football world has all of a sudden gone bankrupt and the cathedral still has not recuperated from its financial ruin. Now, as then registering a free agent Messi would need some hefty economical gymnastics to be executed and, understandably, a part of the club's management did not want to do that which Messi also somberly stated in his MD interview saying he was sure that there were people in the club who did not want him to return to Barca and as that Barcelona could not guarantee him anything or give him an official offer. He had the lucrative offer from Al-Hilal on the table to pick up but they had nothing to offer to him except that humongous amount.
Messi, in his interview with Mundo Deportivo said, “if It had been a matter of money, I'd have gone to Arabia or elsewhere. It seemed like a lot of money to me. The truth is that my final decision goes elsewhere and not because of money.” Though such pompous talks are not new for athletes, Cristiano Ronaldo -- after his Manchester United fiasco and just before moving to Al-Nassr -- in an interview with Piers Morgan stated that it was not a matter of money for him and if it was he would have gone to Saudi Arabia earning a king's ransom there.
Just a few days later, unabashedly and ironically, Ronaldo grabbed Al-Nassr's massively lucrative deal of 200 million Euros per year.
Perhaps Messi did not do that and money truly does not matter that much to him and turned down some of the biggest deals in all of sports history put on the table for him by Al-Hilal but it is hard to imagine that his father, and agent, Jorge Messi would keep a single stone unturned to capitalize on his son's immense pull -- perhaps the biggest in not just football but in all of sports itself.
Though the deals have not been made public, Messi will reportedly get a share of MLS and Apple's massive broadcast partnership deal. Adidas is also said to be a part of the deal and MLS is also reportedly giving Messi an option to buy equity in an MLS club after leaving the league. All these might not be as lucrative as the €400 million a year offer of Al-Hilal but from the point of view of one Lionel Messi, they do not look very bleak either.
Messi's decision to join Inter Miami has very little to do with a great sporting project. After all, a player of his stature does not go to the MLS in order to win that league by any means. It is more of a subjective, life-oriented decision. On multiple occasions, Messi has said that he wanted to spend the twilight years of his career in the US, especially Miami where he owns at least one property and is sometimes seen spending vacations. A move to the US might have also appealed to him because of the upcoming 2024 Copa America which will be held in the US and it will also host the 2026 World Cup which he might or might not play.
However, in the state of football in the US, even Pele himself couldn't make the people of the US fall deeply in love with the sport and it is hard to imagine that Messi, in his brief tenure at Inter Miami, would be able to do that either. No single athlete, however big their stature might be, can't bring on an enormous cultural change in just a couple of years. It will take a long time for the Americans to truly be in love with the game and that is if such a day ever comes but there is hardly any doubt that the biggest football star on earth will have a seismic effect on boosting football's appeal in the US.
Lionel Messi's relationship with football has been a fine one -- there is almost nothing one can now give to the other. Messi has bemused the footballing world with his mesmerizing ability and impeccable consistency for almost two decades and football in return has given him all the accolades plausible, even the one which agonizingly eluded him all his life finally gave him its glorious touch last December.
Though it is not a farewell from club football altogether, it is not very far from that either. Not many people now reschedule their daily activities because of an Al-Nassr match, and it is hard to imagine that millions of people all over the world will wait patiently every week rescheduling their activities to watch Inter Miami play.
However, for the person who has given so much to football, who has given millions of people so many great memories to cherish for a lifetime, one can only wish the very best.
Najmus Sakib is an ex football aficionado. Reach him on Twitter at @sakib221b.
