One night in October, Paris Saint-Germain played a league game against last season’s French champions, Lille. In the first half, Lille dominated completely. Thirty minutes in, Canadian Jonathan David scored for Lille, with a dazzlingly quick movement.

At the other end of the field, Lionel Messi stood there in his PSG shirt, looking puzzled but admiring of the goal. Messi was subbed off at half-time, allegedly with muscle strain. PSG came back to win 2-1.

How did all this happen: Messi gone from Barcelona to PSG, Barcelona almost bankrupt and sinking, languishing in the middle of the La Liga table at year’s end, and already out of the Champions League? The mess that surrounded the Messi move and Barcelona’s collapse into mediocrity is one of soccer’s great mysteries, or an outright tragedy, depending on your loyalties.


Brief History Of Messi Football Career


At that stage, Messi was five years old in Rosario, Argentina, and already attracting attention for his skills. And at age 13, Messi would arrive in Barcelona with his family. He’d get needed medical treatment and be schooled and nourished at the team’s academy into becoming one of the best players in the world.

He would experience little except Barcelona, staying for 18 years, and be at the core of a team that won the La Liga championship 10 times, the Spanish Super Cup eight times, the Copa del Rey six times and the UEFA Champions League four times.


Eventually, Lionel Messi became the perfect player to use everything established by Cruyff, later honed and perfected by Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola, who has played under Cruyff and became his assistant and student. Under Guardiola, Barcelona’s glory years began in 2008 and continued even after Guardiola left, exhausted by the internal politics of a club owned and controlled by the city’s “burgesia,” or merchant class.


The glory years, when the club became a global phenomenon, made it lazy, suggests Kuper. Fewer young players emerged from its academy and those who did often left, knowing that breaking into a team anchored by Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Pique and Victor Valdes was unlikely. As money poured in from TV rights and merchandising, Messi demanded more and more every season. His father, Jorge, did the demanding.


Messi quietly asserted himself in the backrooms, asking the club to acquire new players that would suit his style of play, and dispense with others. Between 2014 and 2020, the club spent close to €1-billion ($1.45-billion) on acquiring players, often overpaying for overrated youngsters who never lasted long.


And when Messi got a pay raise, everyone in the team knew it, asked for a raise and got it. The payroll was staggeringly large. Between 2017 and 2021 it is estimated that Messi was paid €555-million.

Kuper is excellent on both the internal politics of the club and roles played by the most junior staffer to the club president, and the meaning of what happens at La Masia, where the focus is not just on developing skills, but the science of nutrition, sleep and psychology.


There is also a fascinating analysis of how the Barcelona style of play is created, from the training sessions to the instructions given to players about how and when to move the ball forward.

Anyone who watched the team – and Spain, which absorbed much of the club’s technique – will agree when Kuper says, “None of this is trivial. What Barca created, in the world’s most beloved sport, is one of the most cheering of human achievements.”

As for Messi, he couldn’t see the writing on the wall: Barcelona had accumulated massive debt and could not afford to pay him. In 2020, he had been tempted to leave, probably for Guardiola at Manchester City but, as Kuper reveals, his father’s amateurish approach to negotiations meant Messi had to stay, and take a pay cut.

In 2021, Jorge Messi tried to reach a similar deal, but that proved impossible. COVID had tipped the balance; the loss of revenue from games not played had made Barcelona a financial basket case. Even if Messi played for free, the club was barely functioning, mired in deep debt.

Now, Messi plays for Paris Saint-Germain, sometimes playing well but often looking forlorn and puzzled; lost in the mess of it all, something that even he, the genius with the ball, cannot comprehend.


Messi is one of the greatest player that ever play the round leather. An amazing playmaker, a keen to ball statistical analysis strategy with his dominant feet in reams of seconds that baffles football world. A glorious out of the world goals. Above all Messi will remain Messi a very talented player the world might not forget in the next 100 years.