It's Barca vs La Liga and Messi is the victim

Late on Thursday night, the footballing and sporting world was shaken to its core when news broke that Barcelona would be unable to sign Lionel Messi back.

Financial constraints and a wage cap employed by the La Liga have meant that Barcelona cannot sign Messi back, according to the official statement by Barcelona. 

Although Messi and Barca found an agreement where Messi would take a wage cut by 50%, it was still not enough to decrease the Catalan club's wage bill enough to meet La Liga's wage cap demands.

So what does this mean for Messi and Barca? Is this the end? 

Photo: Twitter

It feels odd because, since June, when Messi's contract with Barca ran out and he became a free agent, no one expected Messi to leave Barca.

No clubs made a serious move for Messi as he had a verbal agreement with Barca and their board president Joan Laporta to sign another contract with reduced wages. 

So everyone waited for the day when the Argentine would put pen to paper. They waited and waited and all signs pointed to him signing on Thursday night and things to be made official. 

Instead, what everyone got was quite the opposite. A shocking revelation that their greatest ever player would not be singing with Barca because of La Liga.

Within minutes, Real Madrid published an official announcement where they said they would not approve of the CVC deal that La Liga had made.

In short, the deal would be good for La Liga and their clubs during the pandemic as CVC would be giving La Liga clubs money to survive in this difficult financial time.

But in the long term, CVC would be taking money from the clubs over the next 50 years. 

Also, that would also mean there is no chance of Real or Barca being in the European Super League (ESL) and both clubs are firm believers that the ESL is the only option for them to regain financial superiority like they used to have. 

Now this begs the question, are Barca trying to force La Liga's hands here? 

They don't agree with the CVC deal and they don't seem to have the option to abide by La Liga's salary cap after recent meetings between the Barca chief and La Liga president Javier Tebas did not go well.

The La Liga salary cap explained 

Basically, La Liga has a salary cap for all teams to ensure financial fair play and Barça must knock 200 million euros off their wage bill in respect to last season. 

It's calculated that since the start of the pandemic and the closing of stadiums until June 30 2021, Barça have lost around 580 million euros. 

That supposes that of last season's 347 million euro salary cap, the club must halve it, down to around 150 million or 160 million, the same limit as clubs like Villarreal and Athletic.

According to various reports after the meeting between Laporta and Tebas, La Liga have made it clear that they will be inflexible with Barca's salary and secondly that for every 100 million knocked off, 25 million more can be added. 

In addition, to comply with the rules, Barça must reduce the number of players in the squad, which is currently higher than the 25 permitted.

The salary cap for the 20 clubs in the first division had been brought down to 2.3 billion euros from 2.9 billion euros before the pandemic hit a season ago.

These adjustments were part of the league's long-standing financial control measures to reduce club debts and keep them healthy financially. 

Each club has a different salary cap calculated based on a series of factors that include revenues, costs and debts.

Spain was the league that had the greatest reduction in spending in the offseason transfer market, 66% less than in the previous year. The Premier League had a reduction of 23%.

So how can Messi stay?

With this salary cap, Barcelona could have found other ways to fit Messi in.

Say, terminate the contracts of some high earners or sell/loan more players off to meet those demands or make the whole squad take a wage cut, especially the top earners. 

And it's not like they haven't tried. They have sold fringe players like Junior Firpo, Matheus Fernandes, Konrad de la Fuente, Jean-Clair Todibo and Juan Miranda.

Francisco Trincao has left on loan to Wolves and they are working to sell high earners Samuel Umtiti, Philippe Coutinho and Miralem Pjanic. 

Photo: Twitter

Even if Barca sold all these players, they'd still not meet La Liga's wage cap demands with players like Antoine Griezmann, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba on big wages. 

There have been talks of reducing the wages of these top earners, to meet La Liga's demands and players like Busquets have shown willingness to bring Messi back at the club: "The best thing is that we play together for many more years."

But then where's the problem?

La Liga's deal with CVC seems to be at the heart of the problem for Barcelona and also Real Madrid.

See, Barca are definitely going to miss Messi, but they can be competitive in the league.

La Liga however, loses a lot of it's allure without Messi, and after having already lost Cristiano Ronaldo. 

It's a bigger loss for La Liga than it is for Barcelona if we think carefully and La Liga would try its best to keep Messi in the league, as reported before the CVC deal happened. 

This could just be Barca's way of protesting against the CVC deal and force La Liga to withdraw from it. 

They could then get players to take the wage cut, comply with La Liga's salary cap and then get Messi back in. 

The ball is now in Barca's court and now La Liga must decide what they want.

Paris Saint-Germain have started talks with Messi's representatives for a potential move to France and a reunion with Neymar.

Messi is said to have been shocked and unhappy that he cannot go back to the club he has been at since he was 13.

Then, there is also the case of his family adjusting to a new country and new surroundings and was a big part in why Messi chose to stay back at Barca last season under then-president Josep Maria Bartomeu. 

PSG could be Messi's next destination, but hism returning to Barca cannot be ruled out, and seems the likelier option.

So then one question remains, Messi: se queda?