After it became clear that Barcelona couldn’t sign Lionel Messi to a new contract due to their alarming financial situation, some fans of the Catalan club secretly believed the player’s love for Barca is so strong that he might consider playing for free. And it appears they were not alone.
Barcelona president Joan Laporta recently spoke about Messi’s exit during an interview with radio station RAC1 and admitted he also had hopes that the Argentinian star forward could take pro-bono approach.
“I hoped Messi would do a u-turn and he would say he would play for free,” said Laporta. “I would have liked that and I would have been all for it. It is my understanding La Liga would have accepted it. But we cannot ask a player of Messi’s stature to do this.”
Understandably, Messi didn’t consider staying in Spain and playing without salary, and instead bolted for France where he again became one of the highest-paid players in the world after inking a deal with Paris Saint-Germain. The 34-year-old superstar has since played five matches with PSG and has one goal to show for.
It was recently revealed that there was another route Barcelona could take to keep Messi. The La Liga offered the club to sell 10 percent of their commercial business to an investment fund CVC Capital Partners for the next 50 years. This would have helped Barca to get out of debt and have enough funds to re-sign Messi, but they ended up rejecting the proposal.
