The conditions that Leo Messi put to Bartomeu to renew with Barça in the midst of a pandemic

BarcelonaJosep Maria Bartomeu was on the verge of getting Leo Messi to renew with Barça in the summer of 2020, when there were only 12 months left for his contract to end. The former Barcelona president and Jorge Messi, with legal representatives Jorge Pecourt and Alfonso Nebot in the middle, held a negotiation at the highest level just before the club jumped into the air following the 2-8 in Lisbon against Bayern Munich, previous step of the famous burofax that the Argentinian striker used to try to break his commitment that same summer. The newspaper The world reveals this Wednesday e-mails with the conditions that Messi asked to continue his career at the Camp Nou until June 30, 2023. The Madrid club warns that this publication is the first of a series called Barçaleaks which will show the content of more Barça conversations with players such as Gerard Piqué or Neymar Júnior.

The specific case of Messi shows a formal negotiation that begins on June 11, 2020, in full deconfinement, with a written proposal from Pecourt to Bartomeu, the former Barcelona CEO, Òscar Grau, and the former head of legal services, Román Gómez-Ponti. In it, a labor contract is stipulated until 2023 and an increasing fixed salary. The Argentinian’s environment accepts a 20% discount during the first season, in which an economic crisis was sensed due to the pandemic; of only 10% during the second and 0% during the third, with an interest of 3% in favor of Messi in each reset of conditions. In other words, at the end of the contract, the striker would have recovered his pre-covid income with a small surcharge. Among the requests of this first formal approach, Messi also asks for a private box in the stadium for his family and that of Luis Suárez; the continuity of his personal assistant, Pepe Costa, and the upward correction of all emoluments in the event of a tax change. The former Barcelona president accepted all these conditions, although he managed to make the initial reduction 30% and not 20%.

What Bartomeu did not agree to, according to the content of the talks, was to put a termination clause of only 10,000 euros, which would have meant that Messi would have left in fact free transfer in case another team was interested in his services, and the immediate payment of a renewal premium of 10 million euros. “It would be difficult to interpret a new number and he does not want anyone to say that we have agreed to leave the door open to Leo […] As for the bonus, as the covid situation is and with the reduction in income, we cannot agree more. All the big clubs will struggle to maintain the salary levels of their squads. That is why I proposed to you that any increase was possible as long as the club returned to the income levels of 1.1 billion [anuals]”, justified the former president of Barça in the last communication between the parties, since Messi and his people never resumed contact until the sending of the burofax.

Jorge Messi, an implacable negotiator

Months later, with the manager in charge of Barça, Messi did accept a deferral for four years as part of a collective negotiation in which Piqué did not participate. After the elections of March 2021, his father resumed contact with the new president, Joan Laporta, who in the campaign had assured that he would fix the renewal of the 10 “in a roast“. Finally, however, the current manager renounced the continuity of the best player in Barça history due to pressure from the backers of his board, the contrary position of the former CEO Ferran Reverter and the non-agreement regarding the solution that Javier Tebas suggested to him to obtain fair play financial to fit Messi’s new contract in the entity’s precarious economic framework. His father’s last negotiating moves didn’t help either, which led to Laporta’s definitive resignation.

Now Messi plays for PSG and lives focused on the World Cup in Qatar, probably the last he will play as a professional footballer.