With Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi’s future up in the air, questions have been asked as to whether he would reunite with his former manager Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.
What’s the latest?
The 33-year-old, who has been labelled as the greatest player to ever play football, wants to leave the Catalan giants and embark on a new challenge, according to journalist Marcelo Bechler, the same man that broke the news that Neymar was to join Paris Saint-Germain.
Bechler claimed that he is angry with the board and has been left disappointed with the club and that his club would not want to keep as a prisoner if he doesn’t want to be there.
Barcelona were recently humiliated at the Champions League quarter-final stage 8-2 by Bayern Munich, which saw Messi give a frustrated and dejected interview to Movistar+ (cited by Goal.com) after the final whistle.
However, this is not the first time that reports have emerged stating that Messi wants to depart from the club that he came through it’s academy in 2006.
Deja vu
Back in 2017, Mundo Deportivo claimed that the Argentina international wanted to leave the club and join Manchester City the summer before, around the time that he was on trial for tax fraud.
The report added that he had a £212m release clause, which was £100m more than City were willing to pay at the time.
Will City sign Lionel Messi this summer?
Yes, definitely!
No, he won't leave Barcelona!
So this isn’t the first time that reports like this have emerged, and it certainly won’t be the last. With the current climate, it looks highly unlikely that City would be willing to pay whatever Barcelona want for his services.
Messi’s contract expires in 2021 and has a market value of £100.8m, according to TransferMarkt. Even though he has entered the latter stages of his career, the right-winger is still right up there in terms of his performances.
He has scored a total of 634 goals and provided 285 assists in 731 appearances. As well as this, he possesses 138 caps for Argentina.
Messi would be unbelievable in this City team. As Noel Gallagher recently told talkSPORT along the lines of Kylian Mbappe, he added that playing the Frenchman in front of Kevin De Bruyne would result in City winning everything.
Imagine the sort of impact that Messi would make.