As the football world attempts to unpick Lionel Messi's potentially-acrimonious departure from FC Barcelona, Spanish football journalist Dermot Corrigan let us into the goings-on in Catalunya.
With the news that Messi served the club with an official transfer request, Corrigan expanded on the set-to between board and player.
https://youtu.be/jwGcts63iI0
The current gripe is that the club are looking for the full release clause from a buyer, with the player believing he can leave for free, and Corrigan believes the player will argue exceptional circumstances due to COVID-19.
"Whether the judge will accept that or not, is another matter. It depends on the small-print in the contract that very few people have seen. [My source] was saying that a comma here or there might end up making a difference, depending on how the judge views it depending on contract law in Spain.
"It would be a super case to be involved in as a lawyer as it will be very closely argued, it is not an open-and-shut case at all. The other side of it is that Messi knows that it is very unlikely to go to court, and maybe this is another bargaining tool to see what might happen next and it might not ever end up going to court."
One of the remaining questions, and one that might never be definitively answered until Messi decides, is when he made the decision to leave the Blaugrana.
"There has been quite a lot of frustration building between the Argentinean and the Barcelona board from dealing with Messi and his father [from the board perspective] over the years.
"Messi has felt that he has been disrespected by the Barcelona board and by club president [Josep] Bartomeu over the salary reductions during lockdown, and, before that, with [Eric] Abidal when he felt that he was being blamed for the previous coach being fired. Messi has felt that for a while that everybody blames him and that whenever anything goes wrong at Barcelona, he gets the blame.
"If it's a signing that arrives and doesn't hit the ground running, like Antoine Griezmann, it is his fault because he doesn't pass him the ball. If Barcelona don't go out and sign new players, it is because Messi earns so much money. Even if the coffee is too hot in the machine, Messi feels that he could get the blame for it."
Messi and Koeman
With Barcelona' new coach Ronald Koeman reported to have greeted the player less than warmly in their initial meeting as manager and player, Corrigan believes these reports are inaccurate.
"A lot of coaches at Barcelona - including Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique - have started their conversations with Messi [...] as if they are going to lay down the law. Enrique, in particular, is a blunt character and pretty soon realised that, for the good of everybody, was going to have to treat Messi different to everybody else.
"Koeman would have been there and seen all this happening; if he thought that he was going to play it tough with Messi then he really didn't know what he was getting himself into.
"His mind was, more than likely, already made up."
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