There are a bunch of pay drivers in motorsports, pay riders in cycling, both good and bad. I mean, you have people like Jean-Denis Délétraz, Giovanni Lavaggi and other notorious mobile chicanes who had no talent and paid for seats... but simultaneously you had people like Niki Lauda get their start as pay drivers. In cycling, while there may be many a Gabriel Muller or Ramón Carretero, there's also a guy like Alexis Vuillermoz, who had to stump up personal sponsorships to get a team but has more than justified his place at the top table, and also people who come with some baggage on a "pay me what I win you" deal, like Frank Vandenbroucke once did, and Cavendish more recently.
At the end of the day, Messi may not personally have bankrupted Barcelona, but the financial contortions they've had to make to keep their window of opportunity open in his prime, competing for talent against the bottomless money-pits of Middle Eastern oil teams like PSG and Manchester City, have. And don't you think they'd want to keep him if they could? He's been a huge part of their team, their brand, their identity for fifteen years.
But it takes two to tango. If Lionel Messi came up to the board and said, "you know what, I want to play out my days in Barcelona, if it will help the club out I'll play for almost nothing, I've earnt untold millions in my career, the sponsorships and image rights of Lionel Messi are worth millions in their own right, and I want to ensure that my legacy with the club is untarnished and the team can build for a future without me", they'd have bitten his hand off. Of course they would. I'm not saying that's what he should have done - because the market will pay a lot for Lionel Messi, and he has every right to maximise his earnings given the short careers that footballers have relative to the public at large. But if his wage demands - even when he agreed to a pay cut - are such that Barcelona literally cannot afford them without having a total fire sale of those same assets that are needed to drag them through the post-Messi years to avoid going under, then he has no right to be upset if they say "actually, Leo, I'm afraid it's just not worth it." Because if they sign Messi to an extension and can't comply with solvency rules, then they've got to sell off assets. And people know they've got to sell off assets and are going to low-ball them on every offer.
Barcelona have played this poorly from a PR standpoint, for sure, and blaming La Liga's solvency rules for a mess they got themselves into (when the mess Barcelona have got themselves into was precisely what those rules were brought in for) is another issue. Spending has got out of control, and with the pandemic hitting economies hard, creditors aren't as forgiving and the Spanish giants who've been protected from consequence for their overspending for years are suddenly finding that they're getting their comeuppance. And while although nobody saw the pandemic coming, Real seemingly saw the writing on the wall in terms of value for money and have affected something of a turnover of their ageing Galácticos, Barcelona had already lost most of theirs to retirement or sold on expensive replacements at a loss, and thereby, with Messi's contract winding down at the worst possible time, have backed themselves into a position where even he is no longer bulletproof if they want to keep the wolf from the door.
I don't think there's any serious discussion about whether Barca should have kept Messi - only possible by accepting the cvc deal I think, and I'm not advocating they should have taken that just to keep a 34 year old Messi when they are standing on the brink of the abyss.
What I don't like is the way Laporta has played this. The past year he made it seem like there was no problem with Messi's renewal. Before he was elected he was like "with me Messi will definitely stay, I will bring in Haaland... and so on". Then when he was in charge he was still behaving like "yeah, terrible what Bartomeu did to this club, but now we are starting better times again and by the way there's no problem with Messi's renewal at all". It's not more than a few weeks ago that he said there would be a few more signings (in addition to the four they have done).
So, Messi flies in, thinks things are sorted out and then he's told "no, doesn't happen, no chance."
So, basically, he never said "we are standing close to the abyss, if anything you will have to play for pretty much nothing".
Maybe he was hoping for some big solution. Super-league, later cvc, something like that. Or he was just sure they would eventually get rid of enough players like Umtiti so that the salary cap would be higher and their own wage bill lower.
Now we know they have serious problems of even registering their signings Depay and Garcia. I'm sure they will eventually find a solution, but it might be a really bad one, like paying Umtiti's wages at Benfica and Pjanic's wages at Juventus in full, selling Braithwaite for nothing, things like that.
Basically, Laporta is nothing but a politician, just like Bartomeu. It's all games and deals in the backrooms and promises nobody cares to keep - so, not really that much of a difference to Bartomeu.
Bartomeu was the worst president and his board the worst board, though, that any club could have. Do you really think he would have acted differently if Messi hadn't been there? That he would have acted responsibly? That all this headless gigantomania and the many medium-expensive but fruitless because stupid (like a thousand players that play on the same half wing-half 10-half 9) position, but by all means keep away from a good cb or fullback...) signings and contract-extensions was just to please Messi and the expectations that everyone had because of Messi?
Bartomeu has shown enough he doesn't care about Messi. Before the last treble he already wanted to sell him. Messi didn't get along very well with Luis Enrique, Enrique stayed until the two were okay with each other, then Enrique left because he wanted to. I think Messi didn't for instance enjoy playing with André Gomes very much, Gomes was on the pitch again and again. Messi said something about him wanting to talk to Bartomeu about something and Bartomeu was always like "yeah, yeah, we will talk about that tomorrow / another time" and just walked on, lol.
In the end we learned that Bartomeu even had this weird deal which should make some people like Messi look bad on social media... I mean a president who pays millions to vilify his players.
So, do we really think Bartomeu cared about Messi's wishes?
Do we think that getting Dembélé for far more than 100 million for instance was about Messi wanting a strong team or the board wanting to make use of Messi's prime years? I'm pretty sure it was mostly about a hurt ego and appeasing the fans (and voters) because PSG had snatched Neymar from them like that, after Bartomeu had said that's never gonna happen and was also ridiculed for a rather "low" stipulation in Neymar's contract.
I think Bartomeu was always looking for the next big signing which would please the fans who were demanding that - I have read enough comments of some Barca fans in the past days, already thinking about Haaland again, saying how the club should get him next year... And I suppose if there was any money to be spend, if it was possible with the salary cap, Laporta would do everything to give Haaland to them - although what the club really needs, since years, are defenders. That has nothing to do with Messi. It's what a president of a club does as long as it's possible, when he knows he needs to be elected and everyone demands big signings.
In that regard, the rich owners of some clubs
can be a blessing for those clubs, especially if they don't care much about the sport itself and just put someone in charge who has good knowledge (like Guardiola or Tuchel or Klopp) and let that guy decide how they want to play and which players they need for that. Barca after Guardiola never went for such a coach. They went for coaches ready to work with the players they were given, and also only people with "Barca DNA", even if that only means to have played for Barca for one season once...
Yeah, they were really full of themselves, with all their talk about their history and their DNA... They reached the absolute pinnacle of football under Guardiola with the way they played, the way they made people enthusiastic, their successes. And they - club and fans - were never willing to step back from that, and of course, honestly, it's not easy. The youngsters they tried to fit in from La Masia just didn't work out - now there are suddenly a few great guys coming up again, Pedri and Fati, if he comes back as strong as he was before his injury, look like the real deal. But before that there was actually a bit of a drought, the players were not bad, but not breathtaking either. And of course people wanted breathtaking football from the club after they had seen the Guardiola years. So, it would have been necessary from the club to say "sorry, it is IMPOSSIBLE, we are in NO position at all to do this financially, we have to rely on players like Alena, otherwise we will go down". A good chance for the fans and socis being very unsatisfied and not very understanding, though, when it looked like they might fall behind Real and PSG and City and Liverpool already...
The one thing that might have changed things for the better without Messi though is the coach. I don't know about that. Maybe they would actually have looked for a really good coach, although I'm not sure about that either, because I'm sure Messi would have liked Pocchettino last year for instance, but they declined Poch and went for Koeman... Barca DNA. (Not that Koeman is a bad coach, but if it works out it surely isn't because they knew what they were doing...they were just looking for a club legend willing to accept their terms.)
In the end, I think they are going to be okay on a sportive level. Ter Stegen, de Jong, Pedri, Fati, Dembélé, Griezmann,... (and Dest is better than what they had). Personally I think Garcia will be their most important signing now. I think they are still missing a really physical midfielder (I don't mean a fighter like Vidal and not an ultra-polyvalent but undertalented Roberto, but someone like Wijnaldum indeed), and some back-ups for their defenders since Lenglet, as nice as he is just makes too many mistakes and Umtiti, who was so great, is half-invalide.
But with a bit of luck things can work out well for them. It will be tough against the ultra-competition that some other teams in Europe have formed, though, also against the wow-team of Atletico.
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