Leo Messi in Paris, a commercial success, an oven on the sporting level and… “two difficult years” for the main interested party. The 35-year-old world champion added this last part to the results of his visit to the capital, in an interview with SPORT and Mundo Deportivo. Quite frankly, his words will surprise no one. But as he did not see fit to express himself in the French media during his two seasons under the Parisian colors, they slam all the more. And they confirm what we already knew: the transplant never took and the “Pulga” will have represented a casting error for Paris, an error in the course for him. Moreover, the native of Rosario readily admits that he was forced to make “a hasty decision” during his forced departure from a Barça that he never stopped “loving”. That’s why he didn’t want to wait for the Catalan club to be in a position to recruit him this summer, and why he said yes to Miami: so as not to relive the situation of 2021 and, in the background, to find themselves in a similar situation in terms of choice.
The Parisian leaders, who bent over backwards to sign him and offered him a considerable salary, at the risk of jeopardizing the club’s financial fair play situation, will appreciate it. “During those two years, I wasn’t happy, I didn’t have fun, and it affected my family life. I missed a lot of my children’s life at school. In Barcelona I was going to look for them, here much less, I shared fewer activities with them. This is also why I am making this decision, to find, in quotes, my family, my children, and enjoy everyday life, ”insists the seven-time Ballon d’Or, who leaves with “mixed feelings”. And who forgets to say that he may not have done everything to feel at home in Paris…
If he admits that he felt “very, very well, very comfortable in the club, in the city, with my family” during the first six months of the 2022-23 season, after a “difficult first year “, and that his children finally “adapted” to Paris, Messi expected “a different end. But hey, it’s been two years, which, in general, have been difficult for me, they are behind me. And no one will complain about it, neither him nor the supporters who whistled him again last Saturday, during the ceremony for the presentation of the French champion trophy. Listening to him, Leo Messi spent the last two years of his life in prison. A little strong of coffee, even if we can understand that he went through complicated times after having had to leave a cocoon in which he had been evolving for more than 20 years, a lifetime. To say that Messi lacks elegance costs us. We know the player he is, his place in the history of football. We can only regret that he came to waste his time and that of Paris-SG, even if the main culprits are in the offices of the Factory and especially in Doha, where we let ourselves be deluded by illusions in him grabbing hold of it two years ago.
Beyond the questions of collective balance induced by his presence on the ground, with Kylian Mbappé who does not defend more than him, Messi was simply too branded by FC Barcelona to fully embrace the Parisian experience. “Beyond the fact that the love is always there and reciprocated, it was a strange feeling to hear it at Camp Nou and not be there,” he says of the chants of his glory heard at Barcelona in recent years. weeks. In Paris, there has never been love. Long live King Messi, far from Paris. Far from Barcelona too, and the management of the Catalan club takes as much, if not more, than PSG in this famous interview…
