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#Post#: 43--------------------------------------------------
Lionel Messi is staying at Barcelona for what could be his 'Last
Dance'
DIR By: The Referee
Date: September 7, 2020, 8:32 pm
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Sep 4, 2020
Sid Lowe
Spain writer
Lionel Messi was late. He was late to formally tell Barcelona he
was leaving, which is why in the end he couldn't -- held to the
June 10 deadline he'd missed. And now he was late to tell
everybody he was staying. Ten days after he had sent a burofax
to announce he was walking out, he announced that he was walking
back in again. The statement was coming at five o'clock, they
said, but at five past there was no sign, however many times you
hit refresh. At 10-past, there was still nothing. Twenty past,
half past, 20- to, 10-to. Come on, will you?
It wasn't until six that, at last, it was confirmed, an
explanatory interview, recorded earlier in the day with Ruben
Uria of Goal, was finally released and the silence broken: Messi
was not leaving the Camp Nou. He'd decided to stay. Only he
hadn't decided anything of the sort; he'd had it decided for him
and ultimately admitted defeat. The fact that he is still a
Barcelona player will be described as a U-turn, but it is not.
He changed his mind, they will say, but he didn't. He is still
there because he is stuck, no other reason. He will line up for
Barcelona this season because they wouldn't let him leave.
For the team to respond, Messi must. You have to convince him
and integrate him, make it work with him and for him. And if you
can't, or won't, you have to manage that. You need to seek
complicity or authority, some way to motivate him. Do you build
this into a "Last Dance," similar to the unprecedented title run
of the NBA's Chicago Bulls? A one-year farewell, finishing at
the top?
Will Messi buy into that? And does it work when the coach has
changed and Luis Suarez is on the verge of an exit? Can Messi
channel Michael Jordan with no versions of Scottie Pippen or
Phil Jackson at his side?
Plenty of footballers are forced into positions and clubs they
don't want to be. Player power is quite often a myth; destiny is
not always at their feet. On this occasion, even the most
powerful player of all, the one they accused of controlling the
club, had to swallow. That's not so unusual; what is, is saying
so. Instead, players raise a scarf, hold up a shirt, shake a
hand and smile as if they mean it. Forced to make the best of
it, most footballers won't admit that it's not what they wanted.
But Messi is not most players, not now.
When something like this happens, everyone pretends everything
is OK; they draw a line under it and move on. Messi didn't. This
wasn't Homer Simpson crawling back and begging for his old job
having walked out. It wasn't George Costanza pretending he never
quit, either. Let's never talk about this again. Actually, no,
let's. And so Messi talked. Boy, did he talk. If you still
haven't seen his interview with Ruben Uría, go and do it now. It
is extraordinary, and that conditions what comes next.
As if it wasn't hard enough to fix this, to find a way back, it
is harder now. Just staying certainly doesn't do it. There is a
long way to go still, healing to be done, if that's even
possible. Barcelona did not win him over, they did not convince
him: they obliged him.
This is no victory, not yet. Not when Messi is so direct, so
blunt, as to repeatedly insist that he is only here to avoid
ending up in court against the club. Not when he admits that he
wanted -- wants -- to go, that he is unhappy, that he feels he
has been lied to by the club, and that he doesn't believe in the
project. What project? "For a long time now, there has been no
project or anything; they're performing a balancing act,
plugging holes as they go along," Messi said, and he doesn't see
that changing any time soon.
He has been burnt too often, his faith gone. This process has
only made it worse, leaving bitterness and resentment. How do
you go back after that? How do your return to the pitch and
become the player you were? All the more so if, deep down, you
might not feel like you're the player you were any more: and
Messi is older now, and aware of that. He talked about seeing
out his final years happily. And that didn't mean at Barcelona.
But here he is, so what do you do now? How do you handle this?
What do you say when Messi turns up at San Joan Despí? What does
Messi say? How does he act? No one was really ready for him to
go. But nor, having reached this point, were they really ready
for him to stay.
It wasn't that Messi has said that he was going, it was that he
had gone. Or acted as if he had. There was a coherence to his
refusal to train: Why would he if he was out already? ESPN's
Fernando Palomo put it nicely: He hasn't so much stayed as gone
and come back. Again, not because he wanted to but because he
was dragged back, against his will.
"I'm going to continue at Barça and my attitude won't change
even if I wanted to go. I always want to win, I'm competitive
and I don't like losing anything. I always want the best for the
club, the dressing room and myself. I will give everything,"
Messi insisted, and he is so competitive, so driven, and so
talented that he probably will.
Maybe the football will be his refuge, a place to find himself.
Nowhere better than the pitch, perhaps. Maybe together the
coaching staff and squad can build a team that isolates him from
the club and its context, the crisis around him, the people at
whom he can hardly bear to look. Perhaps they can forge unity
against the front office somehow.
It's possible that anger can drive him, the determination to
make a point, to not let the bastards win. "It hurts," he said,
"that people doubted my love for this club." Perhaps that can
project him, driving him on.
Maybe, but something has shifted over the past 10 days -- and
beyond. He had broken away, only to find those chains still
holding him back. Now, he has to play another season, at least,
in Spain -- one he wasn't anticipating, still less one he
embraced. He talked about how the moment had come, about how
going was a means of rediscovering "enthusiasm," seeking
"happiness." He "needed" it, he said. He has been denied it.
Ronald Koeman, the new Barcelona manager, said that he only
wanted players who want to be there. He now knows, and so does
everyone else, that doesn't include Messi.
Nor did Messi exactly deliver a ringing endorsement of the new
regime, any evidence that he believed things can be different
now. He has seen things decline too fast, too far over the past
five years, and come to believe that the way back is long.
"Honestly, I don't know what will happen now," he said. "There's
a new coach and a new idea. That's good, but then you have to
see how the team responds and if that's enough to compete or
not."
This is not the same Messi as it was, and something had already
broken inside him. Emotionally, he can't be the same. Still less
now that those emotions have been publicly exposed, after
everything that has happened.
His authority is different now, too, the way others look at him.
Can he lead and will they follow as they once did? Some
teammates had accepted his departure was coming; none of them
said anything about it, opting for silence instead. Some
welcomed a shift in culture, a new structure, different
hierarchies. They have watched this whole sorry saga play out
and the damage it has done. Here's a question, for example: Can
he still be captain now?
Another, even more basic question asks: Where does he play? Or,
maybe even more simply: Does he play? Well, of course, he does,
how can he not now after the fight they put up to keep him? But
is it truly what they wanted? Is it what Koeman was working
toward? Might he not have preferred a clean start, a resetting
and reduction of expectations, the opportunity to go entirely
his own way.
Messi said that his departure would be good for everyone; it's
not impossible that Koeman agreed with that. He knows that his
room for manoeuvre might be narrower now, and yet it is he now
who will have to reintegrate Messi.
The manager will have different ideas about Messi's role and
responsibility than those who came before him, and not just in
purely footballing terms. If only because he has different
players around him now -- Luis Suarez, Messi's best friend and
strike partner over five years, is likely to depart for Juventus
-- because the context is different. Because the ideas the new
manager was developing, while embryonic, didn't necessarily
include him. Take Antoine Griezmann, one obvious example: a few
days ago, his former agent insisted the French striker had been
ready to depart but Koeman told him he would have a lead role
now. Ten days on, is that still the case?
On the day Messi said he was staying, he gave the most
convincing case yet for why he should have gone. Already had, in
fact. He had emotionally checked out; checking back in may not
be so easy. He returns unwillingly, angry, feeling like he was
let down and lied to, which is rarely a good way of getting a
footballer to perform best. Feeling like this was already behind
him. which is why this isn't the end; it is an uneasy start.
"The club need new people, younger players. My era was over,"
Messi said. Only, as it turns out, it isn't yet; not through
choice, nor by design, but by obligation. Barcelona made Lionel
Messi stay, now they must find a way to make it work. But so
much has happened, so much damage has been done, so much has
been broken along the way that the fear now must be that they
too are late.
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