He hit amillion posts and crossbars at tgat tournament
Er Mbappe only stayed at PSG when they made him de facto Director of Football. He’s also demanded to be played as a 10
Barcelona took the middle eastern blood money as a sponsor for a few years. Real Madrid too. More than a club my bollox.
This is in the book you mention? Or articles?
Hard to square the reclusive and, until recently , seemingly timid player we see on the pitch with these sort of claims
They’d to take the oil money to pay messi.
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Messi has destroyed you.
This is a very troubling meltdown we are witnessing.
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How has he destroyed me?
It’s really odd lads want to defend Messi.
You’re trying way to hard here.
How?
Soccer is the biggest game on the planet. Messi is one of the most recognisable players in the history of the sport with that comes power and responsibility.
He had more money than a small country and yet he took the blood money. He decided to be the face of a regime who think it’s ok to stone homosexuals to death because they were willing to pay him money.
He is now fronting the Saudi bid to host the 2030 World Cup.
These are the sad facts about Messi. It doesn’t matter how good he is at football.
Ok uncle ben…
Messi uniting the west and the east, truly a great human.
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So you think it’s ok to stone somebody to death because of their sexual orientation?
You’ve shown your true colours defending these actions.
You’re gone very boring. There used to be a bit of cut about you
Oh yeah lad
So the lads have no answer. It’s all ok because Messi is really good at dribbling.
To be fair I don’t think he’d sacked anyone in 2010. Barcelona were in their pomp at the time. The downfall came from 2019 onwards. There are elements of truth to what you’re saying. I thought it was sad when he left for PSG. Barca had a great mystique about them until around 2012 but that’s well and truly gone now.
Mbappe hasn’t done very much that I would recount as memorable between the 2018 and 2022 world cups. 85% of the games he plays for PSG are nothing games. That’s a sad indictment of the current game, although the French league has often been a bit of a monopoly, Marseille in the 90’s, Lyon winning about 7 in a row in the 00’s and PSG since the Qatari investment. Although somehow in all that Montpellier, Monaco and Lille have managed to sneak league titles in the last 11 years or so.
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It’s sad what happened to Barcelona. I recall after the 2015 final @Cheasty or possibly @sidney posted something like it always felt good when Barcelona won the champions league. He was right. Barcelona always played a great brand of football.
I’d love if Messi went back and led pedri, blade, fati, Nico and Gavi - the young players he walked out on and led them to another champions league win.
Messi to Newels would confirm his greatness
The simple fact is money corrupts.
Russian money corrupted European politics and business and led to the situation where Putin was emboldened to inflict mass butchery on Ukraine and elsewhere.
So too money corrupted football.
The most talented players in world football now mostly congregate at clubs which were allowed to be bought by petro-states. Those that aren’t at clubs owned by petro-states are at clubs which wanted to form an excusive Super League.
Barcelona were victims of their own success in a way, victims of the ultra-monetisation of football, and victims of their own bad decisions.
European football became ultra-monetised and Barcelona had to ditch the “more than a club” stuff and get into bed with dodgy people in order to remain financially relevant.
Sporting Lisbon produced Ronaldo and could never have hoped to hold onto him. The other clubs he was at could let him go much easier than Barcelona could let Messi go because they hadn’t produced him.
Messi had been at Barcelona since he was 13. Barcelona felt they could not afford to let the best player in the world go, It was unthinkable the genius they produced could go anywhere else. They were the biggest club in the world, playing in the greatest stadium in the world. Messi ended up being too good at football for Barcelona’s finances. Petro clubs could afford to pay him whatever he wanted, but Barcelona had to match it and keep him for political reasons. Then they made a raft of other, terrible signing decisions, and the pandemic royally fucked them. Now they’re digging their feet further into the financial quicksand.
English football has harnessed its economic power and cultural cachet and is about to destroy all comers and become the NBA of football, except the NBA itself has a draft system so maintains competition, whereas the petro clubs will dominate in England. The traditional European giants and the traditional English giants know this. They are in panic, all of them.
When Lionel Messi left Barcelona there were two clubs in the world who could afford him. They set the market rates, and Messi cannot be expected to turn the market rate for his services down.
Ronaldo will likely go to Saudi Arabia. because they will pay him 200 million dollars a year. He’s a trophy for them. So is Messi.
The golfers they’ve signed are trophies. The fights they host are trophies. Newcastle are their trophy. The World Cup and PSG are Qatar’s trophies and Manchester City are Abu Dhabi’s trophy. The fear the west has of being cut off from fossil fuels are the trophies of all these places.
Compromising people, making them look like fools, is a trophy. Pep Guardiola can talk about the prison sentences handed out to Catalan separatists and the denial of human rights, but when he’s asked about the human rights of people in the UAE he can’t say credibly say anything because the UAE is his paymaster. He’s bought.
LeBron James can speak about the injustice black people face in the US but he can’t say anything about the injustice faced by Uighurs and the general population in China because the NBA, and by extension James, are bought by China.
Football itself is compromised by a governing body obsessed with money and power who are willing to destroy what makes the World Cup great, in order to make more money and because of world football politics.
Football in general can offer platitudes about minority rights but then Qatar can make the whole of football look like fools. Football is bought. FIFA is bought. Infantino is bought. Gary Neville is bought. Richard Keys is a bought propagandist.
If anybody tries to stand against this, the Qatari/Saudi/UAE/Russian bots will savage them. All of this is by design. Money is there to compromise, corrupt and control.
Football is eating itself. The world is eating itself.
The actual World Cup competition, the action on the pitch, is one of the few things that stands outside this and retains an integrity and an innocence. That’s why people love it.
But the ownership of it is a vehicle for despotism. The ownership of everything now seems to be a vehicle for despotism.
Lionel Messi shilling for Saudi Arabia leaves a bad taste, but it is a symptom of something way, way bigger and more malign than Lionel Messi.
Why people are happy that Messi and Argentina won this World Cup is because, regardless of his associations, it was a victory for the pure talent that made him such a monetisable commodity, and one of the world’s greatest football cultures, and because it happened in an old fashioned way that people thought would never happen again.
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