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Paris St.-Germain, the French football powerhouse funded by the state of Qatar, have signed a two-year contract with Lionel Messi.
The deal, which comes days after Messi said his tearful farewell to FC Barcelona, the club where he had spent his entire professional career, concluded a brief and exclusive bidding war for Messi and reunited him with his former Barcelona teammate Neymar on one of the most expensive and talented attacking teams in football history.
The deal also highlighted how the riches of the Gulf have changed the economy of modern football so much that even some of the biggest, richest and best-supported teams in the world are no longer up to the standards sponsored by the. State in the arms race to acquire the most elite players.
Messi’s signing was confirmed by a team official familiar with the deal and in a video posted to the club’s social media account.
Messi flew from Barcelona to Paris-Le Bourget airport on Tuesday afternoon, emerging to greet fans who had gathered there to greet him while wearing a jersey with the PSG slogan “Here is Paris “.
PSG called a press conference on Wednesday morning to introduce Messi.
Messi’s new contract is for two years plus an optional third year, according to the official. It will net him around $ 35million per season, a huge sum but only a fraction of what he earned at Barcelona.
Almost from the time FC Barcelona announced last week that financial hurdles were preventing the club and Messi from continuing their trophy-laden, two-decade-long association, Messi’s destination was in many ways a question of which of both supported by Gulf royalty. teams he would choose.
Could it be Manchester City, owned by a brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, one of the few clubs willing and able to spend freely in the era of the coronavirus pandemic? Or would it be PSG, the star-studded French champion funded by Qatar, a club that, like City, seems immune to a financial crisis that has rocked the global football economy?
City tried to sign Messi a year ago, when they first suggested he could leave Barcelona, the only professional team they’ve played for, but then re-signed to the Spanish club then even that he was critical of the way it was run.
A free agent after his contract expired in June, Messi was unable to strike a new deal with Barcelona due to a financial crisis which meant the numbers simply couldn’t add up.
To re-sign Messi, the club’s greatest player in history, Barcelona would have had to lose more than $ 200 million of their payroll to meet the stringent demands set by the Spanish league. It couldn’t. Certainly not in a way that new Barcelona president Joan Laporta says would not jeopardize the future of a club in debt and expecting losses of almost € 500m next year .
At a press conference on Sunday, Messi broke down in tears as he confirmed what the club announced last week: that Barcelona’s current financial crisis and the Spanish league’s cost control rules were preventing him from signing a new contract. Yet even as he said goodbye, Messi appeared to be trying to soften the blow of his departure, for the fans, for the club and also, it seems, for himself.
“I did all I could,” Messi said. “For my part, I did everything to stay. That’s what I wanted.
But a player who earns around $ 132 million a year in salary and bonuses can’t go anywhere.
He may be 34, but Messi’s performance levels don’t seem distorted by age. Again this summer he was the player of the tournament, top scorer and leader in assists as he led Argentina to the Copa América, their first national team title in nearly three decades.
PSG will add him to an attack that includes two of the game’s best forwards – Kylian Mbappé, the French star in jetted heels, and Neymar, the Brazilian who was once Messi’s Barcelona teammate.
With Messi in its star-studded ranks – and even if Mbappé is sold, possibly to Real Madrid, to recoup some of the cost – PSG will once again aim for the Champions League, the biggest prize in club football but a tournament that , despite PSG’s billions of dollars in spending, he failed to win. Messi has won the competition four times with Barcelona.
Unlike Barcelona, however, PSG are still trying to write their history. And he does it by spending money. A lot of money.
He signed Mbappé and Neymar for the highest honoraria in football history, then surrounded them with even more expensive and well-paid talent drawn to rivals from across Europe. Messi, for example, is joining a team that this summer added Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, Dutch midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum and Real Madrid captain Sergio Ramos. All three, like Messi, were at the end of their contract.
It’s unclear exactly how PSG will justify the addition of these salaries, and Messi, under European football’s cost-control rules. But like Manchester City, who broke the UK transfer record this summer by signing Jack Grealish from Aston Villa for £ 100million ($ 139million), the club appear to be free from national or regional spending rules.
PSG and City have been investigated by European football’s governing body UEFA for breach of financial regulations, but each has managed to avoid significant penalties by successfully appealing to the General Court sports referee. His hand strengthened by these successes, the influence of PSG behind the scenes of power has only grown.
Its president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, now sits on the UEFA board of directors and chairs the influential European Club Association, the umbrella body for more than 200 top division teams across Europe. He is also the most senior manager of BeIN Media Group, the Qatar-based broadcast network which is UEFA’s largest purchaser of broadcast rights.
For Barcelona, on the other hand, the sight of Messi wearing the colors of a different team – something unthinkable just six weeks ago – will be the bitterest sign of the helplessness even of Europe’s biggest clubs on a market dominated by nation states with deep pockets and big dreams.
Rory Smith contributed reporting.
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