Barça president believes Barça has a “moral debt” with the Argentine player
“We would like to be at the end of his career wearing the Barca shirt and cheered by the fields he goes to,” said Joan Laporta when asked by Leo Messi at an event celebrating Barca’s alliance with Acnur. The president of the Barca club, who already feels like one of the big winners of this summer’s transfer market, wanted to open the door to the much-anticipated return of Barca fans. A return that would be the finishing touch to the rebirth of an entity that has gone from galloping crisis to become the club that has invested the most in the world in restructuring its squad.
Laporta’s words come after the rumor mill surrounding the return of the ’10’ has picked up again in recent months. Messi did not shine with the Paris Saint-Germain shirt at the level he used to have as Blaugrana and the numbers prove it. In his first year after leaving Barca, he barely managed to score 11 goals, earthy numbers for a player who hadn’t dropped below 30 goals since the 2007-2008 academic year. That’s why even his father, Jorge Messi, has come to welcome a hypothetical return to Barcelona. “Hopefully one day,” he said upon arrival at El Prat airport in May.
That path also opens up for Joan Laporta, who inevitably feels that his name was forever linked to the departure of the most important player in Barça’s history. “It is an ambition that I have as president and I would like it to happen. I have been partly responsible for that ending that I consider for the time being. Messi’s stage at Barca did not end the way we all wanted it to, it ended very conditioned for economic reasons and we owe a moral debt to him,” the club’s maximum president said on Friday.
Laporta thinks the operation is now unfeasible after this summer’s investment. Leo Messi has a contract with PSG until 2023, when he would be free at the cost of an extension that the Paris club wants to make effective. It is in this scenario, within a year, when the culé entity could consider the possibility of a return that Xavi Hernández himself currently deems “impossible”.
The Rosario star would return at no cost to join a circle that started as a Barça player in 2000 and would have only a two-year break outside of Barcelona.
Source: La Verdad
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