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In the frenetic final hours of April, before a cabal of owners of Europe’s biggest clubs unveiled their plan for a superleague escaping an unsuspecting and unwelcoming world, a schism has arisen in their ranks.
One faction, led by Andrea Agnelli, president of Juventus, and Florentino Pérez, president of Real Madrid, wanted to go public as quickly as possible. Agnelli, in particular, felt the personal pressure to act, in fact, as a double agent. Everything, they said, was ready; or at least as ready as needed.
Another group, centered on American property groups that control the traditional giants of England, advised caution. The plans still had to be fine-tuned. There was still a debate, for example, on how many places could be allocated to teams that had qualified for the competition. They thought it was better to wait until summer.
If the first group hadn’t won the day – if the whole project hadn’t exploded and collapsed into ignominy in a tumultuous 48 hours – it would have been the week, after the Olympics but before the start of the new season, when they presented themselves – an elitist vision and in the service of the future of football.
That the Super League is collapsing, of course, has been a blessed relief. The fact that this week has instead been devoted to a dystopian illustration of exactly where football stands suggests that no great solace should be found in its failure.
Manchester City broke the UK transfer record on Thursday – paying Aston Villa $ 138million for Jack Grealish – for what may not be the last time this summer. The club are still hoping to add Harry Kane, Tottenham talisman and England captain, for up to $ 200 million.
And then, of course, eclipsing everything else, it appeared that Lionel Messi was going to leave – should leave – FC Barcelona. Under La Liga rules, the club’s finances are such that it could not physically, fiscally, register the greatest player of all time for the coming season. He had no choice but to let him go. He had no choice but to leave.
Everything that has happened since has been so shocking that it is surreal, but so predictable that it is inevitable.
There was the tear-stained press conference, in which Messi revealed that he had volunteered to accept a 50% pay cut to stay at the club he called home since then. age 13, where he scored 672 goals in 778 games, where he broke every record he had to beat, won everything there was to win and forged a legend that may not be never to be equaled.
As soon as it was over, there were the first wisps of smoke from Paris, suggesting the identity of Messi’s new home. Paris Saint-Germain were apparently crunching the numbers. Messi had been in contact with Neymar, his former comrade, to discuss things. He had called Mauricio Pochettino, the manager, to get an idea of how this might work. PSG were in contact with Jorge, their agent and father.
Then, Tuesday, it happened. Everything was agreed: a salary of $ 41 million per year, base, over two years, with an option for a third. As his image was stripped of the Camp Nou, a hole appearing between the large posters of Gerard Pique and Antoine Griezmann, Messi and his wife, Antonela Roccuzzo, boarded a plane in Barcelona, all packed and ready to go. .
Jorge Messi assured reporters at the airport that the deal was done. PSG teased him with a tweet. Messi landed at Le Bourget airport, near Paris, sporting that shy smile and a T-shirt that read: “Here is Paris”.
It was not a trip that many had considered taking. But he had no other choice; or, rather, the player for whom everything has always been possible, for once, had only a narrow suite of options.
There is a portrait of modern football in this narrow choice, and it is austere. Lionel Messi, the best of all time, has no real agency where he plays his later years. Even he hasn’t been able to resist the economic forces that drive the game forward.
He couldn’t stay where he wanted to stay, at Barcelona, as the club marched headlong into financial ruin. A mixture of incompetence of its leaders and pride of the institution is largely responsible, but not entirely.
The club has spent a lot and badly in recent years, of course. He wasted the legacy Messi had done so much to build. But he did so in a context in which he was asked and expected to compete with clubs backed not only by oligarchs and billionaires, but by entire nation states, their ambitions not. controlled and their spending unlimited.
The coronavirus pandemic hastened the onset of the calamity, so Barcelona were no longer able to keep even a player who wanted to stay. When the time came for him to leave, he found a landscape in which only a handful of clubs – nine at most – could offer the prospect of allowing him to compete for another Champions League trophy. They had long left everyone behind, relegated them to second class.
And of these, only three could even come close to a salary as gargantuan and rightly so as his. He should not be reproached for the desire to be paid at his fair value. He is the best representative of his art in history. It would be rude to demand that he do so cheaply, as if it were his duty to entertain us. It could only be Chelsea, Manchester City or Paris.
For some – and not just for those who hold PSG to heart – it will be a mouth-watering prospect: a chance to see Messi not only reunited with Neymar, but aligned for the first time with Kylian Mbappé, whom many assume will eventually end. take his crown as the best, and with his old nemesis Sergio Ramos too.
There is no doubt that it is captivating. And undoubtedly profitable: jerseys will fly off the shelves; sponsorships will arrive; ratings will also increase, perhaps lifting all French football with it. It can be very successful in the field; it will probably be good to watch. But it is not a measure. The same goes for the sinking of a ship.
There is no doubt that the architects of the Super League arrived at the wrong answer in April. The vision for the future of football that they put forward was one that benefited them and left everyone, in fact, on fire.
But the question that prompted him was the right one. The vast majority of those dozen teams knew the game in its current form was unsustainable. The costs were too high, the risks too great. The arms race in which they were locked only led to destruction. They recognized the need for change, even though their desperation and self-interest meant that they couldn’t identify what form that change should take.
They were concerned that they could not compete with the power and wealth of the two or three clubs which are not subject to the same rules as everyone else. They felt that the playing field was no longer level. They believed that sooner or later the players first and then the trophies would rally around PSG, Chelsea and Manchester City.
It turned out to be earlier. PSG signed Messi. City could pledge over $ 300 million on just two players in a matter of weeks, as the rest of the game comes to terms with the impact of the pandemic. Chelsea also spent $ 140million on a striker. This is the week when all their fears, all their dire predictions, came true.
There shouldn’t be any sympathy, of course. These same clubs did not care at all about the competitive balance when the imbalances were fine for them. Nothing has hurt the chances of meaningful change as much as their failed attempt to mobilize as much of the game’s wealth as possible for their own ends.
But they are not the only ones to lose in this situation. In April, during those swirling 48 hours, it seemed that football was avoiding a bleak vision of its future. As Messi touched down near Paris on Tuesday, as the surreal and the inevitable collided, it was hard to ignore the feeling that he had simply traded him for another.
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