Barcelona star Lionel Messi admits he seriously pushed to leave last summer.
The Argentine is bitterly disappointed by the club’s current position, which he feels is hard to recover from both on and off the pitch.
“I want to fight for everything that’s ahead of us,” Messi said in an interview with La Sexta. “The club are going through a difficult time.
“Everything that surrounds the club is becoming difficult. The club are in a really bad situation, it’s really bad and it’s hard to get back to where we were.”
Part of the club’s problems have stemmed from Messi’s own desire to leave the club, which came to a head at the end of last season when he tried to force a move away from the club.
“I told the president I wanted to leave a lot of times,” Messi explained. “The burofax was a way of saying it officially, and to mean it.
“I thought that I had completed a cycle and needed a change. For my own head, I needed to get out of all of this.
“I knew it was a year of transition with young players. I wanted to fight for the Champions League and for LaLiga Santander. I wanted to leave and I wanted to do it the right way.
“The president started filtering things to make me look like a bad guy from a film. It was difficult to leave the club of my life, I don’t think there’s a better city than this and my family didn’t want to move.”
Luis Suarez’s Camp Nou exit for Atletico Madrid only served to further highlight Messi’s frustration with Barcelona’s board, but he had the idea to leave before the Uruguayan was let go.
“I had thought about it before Luis Suarez, but that was crazy,” the captain explained. “He went for free to a team that is fighting for the same things as us.”
Now, Messi will be able to discuss terms with clubs over a free transfer from January 1, but he insists that he’s not thinking about next season yet.
“Nothing will be clear in my head until the end of the season,” Messi said. “I’ll wait until the season is over.
“I’m focusing on winning titles and not other things.”
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