Lionel Messi to Stay at Barcelona to Avoid Legal Conflict with Club: Report

Lionel Messi has decided to stay at FC Barcelona to fulfill his current contractual obligations as the legal proceedings of the matter proved to be too much to go ahead with. Messi, who sent a burofax to the club to formally intimate them of his wish to leave on August 26, has been having discussion with the board after his father landed in the city.

After 10 days of discussion, the Messi camp has come to the conclusion that the legal conflict that will come into place if the player pushes to leave is too much and has decided to honour his current contract, according to TyC Sports. Even though Messi has been unhappy with the board of the club, he doesn’t want to leave the club on bad terms and amid the current situations, the parting is likely to get messy.

Messi’s contract runs till June 30, 2021 and the Argentine star has decided to stay for one more season before making a move from the club he has been in for the entirety of his professional career. In order to avoid having to fight a case in the court against the club, which could possibly hinder the move to his preferred Manchester City as well, Messi has decided against leaving the Catalan club.

Earlier in the day, the Messi camp had hit back at La Liga for siding with Barcelona and said, “We don’t know what contract they’ve seen and analysed to back up claims only the buyout clause is applicable even if the player decides to unilaterally terminate his contract after the 2019-20 season.” They reiterated that if Messi decided to terminate the contract at the end of the season, he was eligible to leave for free.

The major fight is that Barcelona are not willing to let go of Messi for free. They are saying that if the Argentine wanted to terminate the contract unilaterally, which is a clause in his contract, he had to do it before June 10. Since, he is trying to trigger the contract after the date has passed by, Barcelona say that the Argentine can leave only if his 700 million euros buyout clause is paid.

Messi was contesting that the contract stated he could trigger the clause at the end of the season and since the 2019-20 season was extended due to coronavirus pandemic, the clause is still valid.

However, according to the latest report by TyC, it seems Barcelona fans will have Messi at Camp Nou for one more season.