Lionel Messi’s tearful Barcelona exit is a football tragedy after financial absurdity

After so many answers – some of them very straight and stark – there’s still one arresting question. Has any player ever wanted to leave a club less?

Has any departure ever been less fitting, its nature summing up the absurdities of the modern game rather than the Barcelona career of perhaps its greatest ever player?

It goes without saying that Leo Messi’s departure from the club should have been in front of a packed Camp Nou, at the end of his time in Europe, and where the tears were genuinely moving rather than so sadly regrettable.

The departure instead took place in a sterile room, with a player who has done more than any to emotionally move people being asked about the details of a league’s administrative rules.

If Messi is football, as one of his former managers once declared, what was this?

And yet while that press conference was admittedly astonishing in parts, its most arresting aspect was a sight rather than anything that was actually said.

© AFP via Getty Images The six-time Ballon d'Or winner cries during Sunday’s press conference at the Camp Nou

That was Messi first weeping before it began, then sobbing uncontrollably as a resounding round of applause continued. There was even an element of intruding on what should have been private grief.

One comment did perfectly articulate the real sentiment behind those tears. It was all the more striking because Messi hasn't historically been the most expressive.

"This is the most difficult moment of my career. I have been through tough moments, defeats... but the next day you go back to training and you have another chance to avenge yourself. That isn't going to happen here, it's the end. Now another chapter starts.”

The next question was how it had come to this.

“I didn’t want to leave,” Messi said, before repeating one line in multiple different ways. “I did everything I could to stay.”

That comment did leave a lot unsaid.

Many have wondered why he didn’t just take a pay cut or, if he loves the club as much as his tears suggested, why he didn’t offer to play for free?

The first thing to say to that is: why should Messi offer to solve the problems of a board that have been the source of so much dysfunction? As literally any worker in any field would be able to testify, these situations are never just about the simple decision of staying or going, or the emotions of it. They’re about long-standing relationships, and existing power dynamics. It is Messi’s fair right not to have his emotions taken advantage of by one of the clubs with the biggest turnovers in world football, who have just continued spending. Many footballers would agree with him, going back to Roy Keane, John Giles in England and much further. It’s not about what you’re paid. It’s about what that represents in relation to the club’s approach. 

Reference: Independent: Miguel Delaney