Six-times world player of the year, Lionel Messi, makes shock U-turn on his future, says he will remain at Barcelona next season.
Messi had believed that a clause in his contract would allow him to leave for free this transfer window, but Barcelona and La Liga insist that his €700m release clause would need to be paid in full.
According to him, paying the €700m release clause is impossible and his family’s reluctance and inability to sue the “club of my life” made him reversed his decision.
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Speaking with Goal on Friday, Messi said: “I thought and was sure that I was free to leave, the president always said that at the end of the season I could decide if I stayed or not,” he said.
“Now they cling to the fact that I did not say it before June 10, when it turns out that on June 10 we were competing for La Liga in the middle of this awful coronavirus and this disease altered all the season.
“And this is the reason why I am going to continue in the club. Now I am going to continue in the club because the president told me that the only way to leave was to pay the €700 million (£624m/$823m) clause, and that this is impossible.”
On how his family reacted to the possibility of his departure, he said: “When I communicated my wish to leave to my wife and children, it was a brutal drama.
“The whole family began crying, my children did not want to leave Barcelona, nor did they want to change schools.
“Mateo is still little and he doesn’t realise what it means to go somewhere else and make your life a few years elsewhere,” he said.
“Thiago, he is older. He heard something on TV and found out something and asked.
“I didn’t want him to know anything about being forced to leave, to have to live in a new school, or make new friends.
“He cried to me and said ‘let’s not go’. I repeat that it was hard, really.
READ ALSO: It will be difficult for my son to remain with Barcelona – Messi’s father
“It was understandable. It happened to me. It is very difficult to make a decision.
“I love Barcelona and I’m not going to find a better place than here anywhere. Still, I have the right to decide. I was going to look for new goals and new challenges. And tomorrow I could go back, because here in Barcelona I have everything.
“My son, my family, they grew up here and are from here. There was nothing wrong with wanting to leave. I needed it, the club needed it and it was good for everyone.
“My wife, with all the pain of her soul, supported and accompanied me.”
Messi, who has won more than 30 major trophies with the Spanish club and scored more than 600 goals added that he would never go to court against Barcelona.
“I would never go to court against Barca because it is the club that I love, which gave me everything since I arrived.
“It is the club of my life, I have made my life here.
“Barca gave me everything and I gave it everything. I know that it never crossed my mind to take Barca to court.”
“But I looked further afield and I want to compete at the highest level, win titles, compete in the Champions League. You can win or lose in it, because it is very difficult, but you have to compete.
“At least compete for it and let us not fall apart in Rome, Liverpool, Lisbon. All that led me to think about that decision that I wanted to carry out.”
Messi’s love for Barca, and his adoring fans, means he is unlikely to go through the motions next season but new manager Ronald Koeman, a Bartomeu pick, now has an unhappy player on his hands as he tries to rebuild a squad that has gone stale.
Bartomeu may claim victory over Messi’s U-turn but the club could now see its greatest asset leave for nothing next summer instead of the mind-boggling sum that would have come after an unprecedented bidding war for his signature.
Manchester City, the club in pole position to sign Messi until Friday’s development, will be disappointed.
Still, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that they could still look to strike a deal in the current transfer window, or perhaps in the winter window when Barca may be more inclined to cash in while they can.
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