After winning 35 titles in 17 years as a FC Barcelona player, including ten league titles, four Champions Leagues and seven Ballon d’Ors, Leo Messi arrived in the summer of 2022 with one goal in mind: to extend the contract that expired on June 30 with the club of his life. To do this, the Argentine agreed to cut his salary by half, something that, despite the club’s delicate financial situation, seemed enough to bring the operation to a successful conclusion.
However, on August 5, a week before La Liga began, and with the player still a free agent, Joan Laporta announced that, due to budget issues, they would not be able to retain their star, who has been in Barcelona since he was 13 years old. His departure, marked by inconsolable crying and broken words before the media, opened a wound that even today, more than three years later, there are those who do not consider closed in Can Barça.
For this reason, any wink from the Argentine footballer, still active at 38 years of age at Inter Miami, is received with special affection in Barcelona. The last one, but not the only one, was carried out by his first son, Thiago, who was born 13 autumns ago in Barcelona, and celebrated his birthday this week with numerous Barça motifs.
The images, celebrated with great nostalgia among the culé fans (“They opened a wound that I thought was closed,” reads the response with more likes on Instagram), have been shared by Antonella Roccuzzo, the footballer’s partner since 2009. They show Messi, his wife and his first son posing in front of a Camp Nou mural, with Barcelona in the background and the Barça shield in the foreground. In another snapshot, the footballer’s children jump and play in a bouncy castle decorated with the Barça club’s shield. And in all of them, without exception, Thiago Messi wears Barcelona’s third kit from last season.
Messi’s future in Miami
However, the hypothesis of a possible return of Messi to the club of his life, still chaired by Laporta, seems more than ruled out. The Argentine, who will turn 39 next June, just when he will be playing in his sixth World Cup with Argentina, his first as defending champion, has just renewed his contract with Inter Miami until 2028, when he will complete his fifth season in the United States.
His teammates and friends Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba will not arrive until that date, since both, also with a past at Barça, have recently announced their retirement from football at the end of this season, a circumstance that could come this Saturday, the day in which those from Florida play the third and decisive match of the first round of the MLS Playoffs against Nashville.
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