Messi announces that he will play in Miami given the impossibility of Barça to assume his contract

“It's crazy. Messi wanted to return. we wanted him to come back. But, at least right now, it's impossible. It could wait, but in football nobody waits.”. This is how they expressed themselves from the top of the Barça club after learning that the footballer had said enough. The current world champion with the albiceleste has decided to accept the temptation of Miami, pending, yes, to sign all the contracts of an agreement that transcends mere sports practice.

Messi took advantage of a joint interview granted from Paris to Sport and Mundo Deportivo to announce that he will play from now on for Inter Miami: “I really wanted to, very excited to be able to return [to Barcelona]. But, on the other hand, after having experienced what I experienced and the outcome I had, I didn't want to be in the same situation again: waiting to see what was going to happen and leaving my future in someone else's hands”, admitted the forward, who elaborated on the impossibility of the club chaired by Joan Laporta to take over his contract: “I heard that they had to sell players or lower the salary of other. And the truth is that I didn't want to go through that (…) I've already been accused of many things that weren't true in my career at Barcelona and I was already a little tired”.

Messi, whose relationship with PSG expires on June 30, never fully believed the siren songs that came from the mobile phone of President Laporta, who received the patriarch, Jorge Messi, at his home in Barcelona last Monday.. The meeting did not arrive even after half an hour, and then it was already clear between the parties that, despite the fact that LaLiga had approved the club's viability plan for the next two years, the entity still had the fair play containment dams broken. Subject to the rules of 40% (salary) and 20% (sales) in its operations -it can dedicate the percentage corresponding to what is saved in transfers-, it must still cut some 250 million to operate normally. And waiting, after what happened two years ago with his abrupt departure from Barcelona, was no longer an option for the Messi family. The footballer, in an interview with the two main Catalan sports newspapers, admitted that during this period he spoke with Laporta “very little, once or twice at most”.

Barcelona had planned that Messi would be the one to reactivate the club's economy – “our last great lever”, according to sources from the Barça entity -, and even intended to offer the forward some 25 million euros gross per season. But, for this, the Argentine would have had to wait for Barcelona to complete several of the planned sales (Ansu Fati, Ferran Torres and Kessié).

400 million from Al-Hilal

Although the mammoth sportswashing plan that Saudi Arabia is carrying out to fill its championship with stars and glitter seemed to have an advantage, the alleged offer of 400 million euros per year from Al-Hilal has not served to convince Messi to play for the emirate.

The Miami plan, which was the one that Messi suspected during his last stage with Barcelona, is the one that has ended up convincing him. And there has had a lot to do with the vital expectations of his wife, Antonela Roccuzzo, in terms of the emotional stability of their three children.. The Messi family, in fact, owns a luxurious apartment in Miami.

Messi's earnings in American soccer go far beyond his salary, the amounts of which have not yet been revealed.. But it has emerged that both Adidas and Apple are taking an active role in the operation as promoters of Major League Soccer (MLS).. Adidas has signed a technical sponsorship with MLS until 2030. Said agreement is valued at 778 million euros, and the German brand is in charge of both the equipment of the 29 MLS teams and of providing the balls.

audiovisual rights

According to The Athletic, Messi would participate in a part of the profits that his impact on the competition would entail. Apple, meanwhile, is the one who owns the global audiovisual rights of the MLS until 2033, in an agreement estimated at 2,334 million euros. In the conversations, the possibility has been offered that Messi can obtain revenue from the new registrations for the season pass that Apple provides to follow the league.

The MLS would also be interested in Messi being able to participate by acquiring a percentage of one of his franchises in the future.. That of Inter Miami, where David Beckham still has a small stake, is owned by the brothers Jorge and José Mas. Jorge Mas, who has also owned Real Zaragoza since March 2022, is one of the most influential figures in the anti-Castro community in Florida.. It was his father, the Cuban Jorge Mas Canosa, a prominent opponent of the Fidel Castro dictatorship in exile in the 1960s, who built his empire in Miami after taking over Church&Tower, a company that provided telephone wiring and that would end up becoming the current MasTec, one of the main Latino-owned companies in the United States.