It’s no real surprise that Lionel Messi’s Barcelona exit is continuing to dominate Spain’s headlines, even three days after his departure was confirmed by the club.
President Joan Laporta spoke about the impossibility of renewing the Argentine’s contract, blaming the situation on the club’s previous board and their mismanagement of finances.
According to La Vanguardia, though, the failure to re-sign Messi was also due to the club’s refusal to accept LaLiga’s agreement with CVC, which Javier Tebas initially presented to Laporta over dinner on July 14.
The agreement secured 2.7 billion euros of investment into LaLiga, of which 15 percent could have been used towards signings and salaries. That would have allowed Barcelona to have 40 million euros more, meaning that they could have had Tebas’ backing in signing and registering Messi.
As Laporta explained on Friday, though, he didn’t want to mortgage the future of the club to ensure one player’s continuity.
In their dispute since Thursday, Tebas revealed that he had dinner with Laporta in mid-July and explained the CVC agreement to him then, claiming that he had “an abundance of enthusiasm” about it then.
