OT: 2021 - 2022 Football / Calcio / Futbol / Fußball Thread
 

What better topic than Messi's exit at Barça to start a new one for the upcoming season...

Where do you think he's is going to end up?

Looks like PSG is the front runner - wouldn't surprise me.

He gets to reunite with Neymar. Except that team already has quite a few egos (Icardi and Mbappe). That's gonna take a good man manager to placate. Unfortunately, Ancelotti is not available.

Also, Barça is absolutely in the dumps financially, as it has yet to fully register its new signings (Aguero and Depay). All that free spending from a few years ago (Dembele, Coutino, and Griezemann) has come home to roost, as it ought to. It really needs immediate cash infusion, just to run daily operations. This underscores why it wants the Super League to succeed: so that it could borrow against its future and get cash now, nevermind that it will just be punting the problem down a few years and letting it fester into an even larger issue, even were the Super League to be able to launch.

Mes que un club, eh?

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Also, Canada won the Olympic gold medal in women's football. Personally think CAN got lucky, but that's what happens when Sweden couldn't convert its chances, and there were oodles of them in AET.

I would also guess PSG -Messi Mbappe and Neymar - not a bad trio

They will be stacked. My favs:
Donnarumma
Verratti
Florenzi
DiMaria

Barcelona President Joan Laporta explained why Messi is leaving the Catalans.


“The inheritance we have received is dreadful. The salary mass is 110% of the income of the club. We don’t have any margin in the La Liga rules and regulations. We have no margin,” Laporta explained at a press conference, as quoted by Football Espana".

“We knew that when we got to the club. The numbers are a lot worse than the numbers that were exposed initially".

“The losses are a lot more elevated than what we had expected. We are spending more than we expected and the current contracts mean we have a salary mass of great magnitude".

The Messi sweepstakes would be very intriguing except for word is only PSG and Manchester City can afford him. I would love to see him in EPL. There was chatter, mostly in June of him considering a move to MLS, but I suspect that's all click bait.

Barça has lost its way. Far from mes que un club, the statement that best sums of the organization of the last 5 years is instead: Messi, mes que un club. This is a team sport after all, and Messi could never do it all on his own.

Per Bloomberg, Messi's old deal was a whopping $160 M/yr (pretax). The new terms were $80 M/yr (pretax). For comparison, the first choice 11 of the team that knocked Barça out of the Champions League in 2019 earned a combined 75 M GBP (or ~$100 USD at the time).

I get the feeling that Barça was ran more by a bunch of people who have no idea what "law of diminishing returns" is and more by people whose idea of a good squad is composed of all star attacking players.

It would not surprise me to see Barça declare bankruptcy in the next decade.

Messi was a blessing for Barcelona that turned into an obligation, as he pretty much influenced which players would play,which coach was on the bench and even which president ran the club.
PSG is the most likely candidate and it will be fun to see how another guy on the pitch unwilling to backtrack and work defensively will disrupt that carefully fine tuned team.

Messi made billions for La Liga and hundreds of millions for Barca. His influence on the team, the league, and the sport worldwide is incalculable. Let's not lose sight of that.

Well said Waldo, will be interesting to see where this ends. Reminds me of Leeds/ Glasgow Rangers paid out the big money but it all went wrong.

Look, I'm not saying he hasn't had an influence, and I'd argue that as long as we properly account for the work Barça brilliant midfielders have done (e.g. Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets), Messi's influence is perhaps the foremost among that golden generation. His wages was most likely justified before his contract renewal in 2017.

But if Barça wants this to be a business (and all indications suggest that it does), it goes against any business sense to increase cost (wages) against a flat-lining revenue. Especially for a player on the wrong side of 30. And unless the debt holders will take Messi's influence as a form of loan payment, it really doesn't help Barça one iota.

Of course it's cynical, but contracts and loans are just that, all about costs and the bottom line and not much about good will. I mean, we are talking about the team who replaced UNICEF with Qatar on its shirt, thereby going from championing an organization that helps refugees to a commercial arm of a government that practices modern indentured servitude (if not outright slavery).

Also, Messi's whole teary farewell and proclamation of "love" just ring hollow.

I saw this comparison made elsewhere, and I think it's apt to bring up here.

I mean if I actually love an organization (rather than being in a relationship that is mutually beneficial), I may consider doing one of the following:
-1) play for free, b/c hey, love > money, right?;
-2) do 1) and lend the club money, b/c they obviously are in dire straits;
-3) find a consortium of backers and invest in the club.

Mind that the third option would be horrible for Barça, as what it needs is objective decision making rather than being ran by someone with an attachment to the club. But at least it's some objective form of help, rather than crying a few tears before jetting off and getting paid elsewhere, all the while ditching the organization you claims to "love".

I should also note that with the way Spanish clubs are set-up, most are legally a special type of stock companies, with special exceptions granted for Barça, Real Madrid, and Osasuna (not sure if the last one has become one since). The reason for this is the belief that it would induce better corporate management, with Barça and Real exempted from doing so back in 1992, as they were considered to be well-ran. This may be changed in the near future, at least for Barça.

Yikes, the Premier League relegation battles are always tense, but Brentford seems to have secured the points in a vital 6-pointer.

Two nil against the Arsenal!

One side story of the Messi move that I find interesting is how much ESPN agreed to pay for the rights to broadcast La Liga here in the US this spring (in May?). Those rights aren't quite as attractive now without him and that was a several year deal.

Now he's in France and his league matches are back on BEIN sports here, as his La Liga matches had been for some time.

Indeed, interesting open for EPL

One of my first thoughts as well. I’m sure there’s some second guessing going on in the ESPN board room right now.

yup - and the suckers just increased the price for my ESPN+ package!! :crap: