Lionel Messi will boycott Barcelona’s first day of training on Sunday, stepping up his efforts to force a move to Manchester City, according to Daily Mail.
Players are scheduled to report to the club’s training ground for coronavirus tests on what is the first day of new coach Ronald Koeman’s pre-season.
But Catalan radio RAC1 reported on Saturday night that Messi had informed the club he will not be attending. The move comes 24 hours after his lawyers requested talks with Barcelona and were flatly refused.
After a failed attempt to instigate a peaceful solution to his stand-off with the club, Messi was always likely to go back on the offensive. However, in communicating his no-show, he is also understood to have reiterated his desire to negotiate his departure from the club with an amicable settlement.
Messi believes beginning pre-season with the rest of the squad would contradict his stance that, having sent a burofax informing the club of his intention to leave on Tuesday, he is now a free agent.
Barcelona continue to insist that notice that he wanted to leave should have been served in June and he is back under contract with a €700million release clause.
This clause is now also being disputed after Cadena Ser reported that after the 2019-20 season it was no longer applicable to Messi’s contract.
That would mean Messi could unilaterally rescind his contract and a tribunal in Spain would set a transfer fee. Linked to the player’s astronomical wages it would still be high but nowhere near the 700m euros mark.
With or without a release clause Messi is now in open rebellion and the pressure will be on president Josep Bartomeu to sort out an increasingly embarrassing situation for the Catalan club.
Messi will be fined for his no-show and those financial penalties will multiply with every day of pre- season that he stays away, further damaging the relationship between club and player. There had been a sense among the hierarchy at Barca that by seeking talks, Messi had blinked first in this stand-off.
The board felt justified in their belief that Messi overplayed his hand in exercising the fiercely-disputed clause in his contract, which the player says makes him a free agent.
Messi was hoping the issue would be resolved quickly, that Barca would be forced to permit him to enter into negotiations with City immediately.
His contract states that the club had to be notified by him if he wished to leave by June 10, to take advantage of the clause which would let him depart as a free agent. Messi argues that the date is meant to indicate the end of the season and the exceptional circumstances of the coronavirus delay mean he fulfilled those criteria by exercising it last Tuesday.
In theory, Messi could simply sign for City and wait for a FIFA panel to adjudicate on his status. However, that would be an incendiary move, which he wants to avoid. It would also recast City as a club bent on taking on football’s authorities and elite clubs, just as they appeared to be heading for more cordial relations, having won their Financial Fair Play dispute with UEFA.
More importantly, it would run the risk of City eventually being ordered to pay the massive release clause, which is a potential liability no club could afford.
Messi must hope that City and Barcelona reach a compromise transfer fee that would leave the Catalan club with their honour intact and fulfil his desire to rejoin former manager Pep Guardiola.
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