If the intention of who (or who) made (or made) El Mundo’s access to Messi’s contract possible was to present him as the cause of Barça’s ruin, they have not succeeded. The majority reaction of the barcelonismo has been the one that with great journalistic synthesis expressed the cover of the Argentinean Olé, which contrasted 555,237,619 with his 650,260,755, read goals, assists and matches. A ‘passing shot’. It is true that these are not the numbers of his four years of contract, not yet completed, but those of his entire career at Barça, but they come to express in numbers in a forceful way his unique category. And magic adds a 0 to the right.
The total amount of the contract in a full-page headline impresses, yes. Not the 50 net that we all believed, but more than 70 net. And it can even be said that the four years covered by the contract are not being Messi’s best. But even so, it is money better spent than that of the Coutinho, Dembélé and Griezmann operations, of an equivalent joint amount. And, seen from Madrid, it is obvious that it would have been much more profitable for Florentino to improve Cristiano (who never came close to those figures) than to bust 300 million two summers ago in Hazard, Jovic, Militao, Mendy and Rodrygo, with their consequent salaries and the performance we see.
I heard on a radio, as a critic, that it is the athlete who wins the most (“double the fourth”). Well of course. It is the best of the most universal sport. Goals aside, it sells 8 out of 9 Barça shirts, it influences the club’s contracts, it increases the tourist pull of the city. He pushed to the limit and Bartomeu folded, but the ruin of Barça comes from those other waste and the pandemicto. If you have to reproach him, it is his bad faces since he is missing Puyol, Xavi and Iniesta. Now he is the captain and is obliged, more for this than for his salary, to a positive and exemplary attitude. To flee from those spoiled adolescent ways that he and his toxic clique exhibit.
