The meeting on Monday between Leo Messi‘s father Jorge and Joan Laporta in Barcelona set off all the alarm bells and created excitement among the fans about the possible return of the Argentinian star to the Catalan giants.
Carles Rexach, ex-player and ex-coach of Barcelona, in his opinion column in ‘Mundo Deportivo’ on Tuesday, advises the PSG player not to return to the Blaugrana
“As a lifelong Cule says: if I were Messi, I would not return to Barcelona now. I know it’s a difficult decision because for him it involves an undeniable sentimental factor and even a life project in the place where he feels at home, ever since he arrived in Barcelona as a child. From the heart, we would all come back,” he wrote.
The former assistant to Johan Cruyff in the ‘Dream Team’ warned Messi that what was always gratitude towards him could be twisted: “Making a sensible and purely logical analysis, you risk too many things. You risk, from the outset, that the fans who always-always applauded you might whistle at you one day, because in football there is no memory and being Messi forces you to have excessive, almost inhuman expectations”.
Rexach insists that Messi‘s return would be purely from the heart: “If Messi returns to Barcelona, it won’t be for money. What they are offering in Saudi Arabia is by far incomparable to what they would pay him here”.
What Rexach does not understand are the reasons given by the club to ‘sell’ the viability of his signing: “It strikes me that the economic argument to support his return is just the opposite of the one given two years ago to explain his departure: from ‘we can’t pay him’ then to his presence ‘it generates resources’ now.”