KT edit: Messi will always have Paris, but he won’t have Barcelona

Fissures with the management had emerged last year when the Argentine evinced an interest to leave but was held back for another shot at glory.

Top footballers are not expected to cry, but when it comes to Lionel Messi, there’s an inheritance of loss. The Argentine great’s resignation from Barcelona where he spent 21 years, the best phase of his career, was expected since June. Fissures with the management had emerged last year when the Argentine evinced an interest to leave but was held back for another shot at glory. It happens when teams are on a winning streak.

The fear of failure can be all-consuming, and also self-defeating when clubs look at their accounts at the end of the day, more so during an economic and health crisis that has swept the world. But no one expected the departure to be this emotional. A weeping superstar, reluctant to leave. He was indeed quitting the club. It was for real. There was no turning back and it all boiled down to cash that was drying up. Blame the coronavirus for these times that are a changing and reshaping our lives and priorities.

Star footballers are not immune to the phenomenon. The Catalan club wanted him to stay; they couldn’t afford him and had to let him go. He had taken the team to astronomical heights and had shaped its destiny. He was its face, its lodestar, its personality. He was Barcelona for two decades. They were family but now was time to get practical for the game to go on with less expensive fresh blood. The pandemic has taken a toll on revenues.

Perhaps Messi was weighing the club down and his larger-than-life presence had given the team a blinkered vision of the future. Players had to be moved out to retain the Argentine who, it must be said, had agreed to a 50 per cent cut in the middle of the pandemic. He still wasn’t affordable at €20 million; the indebted club continued to spend 110 per cent of its income on salaries. Total debt, meanwhile, swelled to €1,173 million, and salary caps enforced by the La Liga only compounded the grim reality.

There were red eyes all around at the press conference on Sunday. Silence and suspense hung heavy in the air. Messi didn’t say it in as many words. He looked lost and forlorn as his wife held out paper tissues to wipe the free-falling tears. The buzz is that he’s headed to Paris Saint Germain, which won’t be the same as Barcelona where he was supreme on and off pitch. Will we see the resurgence of a legend who scored 672 goals for his beloved club? This giant of football also helped his team bag 10 league titles, four Champions Leagues and three Club World Cups. The unhappy truth is this: Messi will always have Paris, but he won’t have Barcelona.