La Liga president Javier Tebas would prefer if Lionel Messi continued to play in Spain but will have no qualms should the Barcelona superstar decide to move on. Messi had stunningly handed in a transfer request in August before making a U-turn after failure to reach consensus with the club on his exit.
It was widely reported that Messi had fallen out with the then Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu who eventually resigned from the post.
However, Tebas isn’t worried about the prospect of another superstar leaving La Liga after the high-profile departures of Neymar (Paris Saint-Germain) in 2017 and Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus) in 2018.
“We would prefer Messi to stay in La Liga but Ronaldo and Neymar left and we have not noticed any difference,” Tebas said. “We are ready.”
Tebas though took a dig at Manchester City who have been heavily linked with Messi.
“It seems the only club in the Premier League that talks about registering Messi is Manchester City, who compete outside the rules. I am not the only one saying this,” Tebas said.
“I am not too worried about them. I have criticised what they do so many times. Doing it one more time makes no difference. City is neither affected by Covid or pandemics or anything because they are financed differently and it is impossible to fight against that,” he added.
Meanwhile, Barcelona have reduced their budget by43 per cent as the club has revealed their debt has more than doubled from 217m euros to 488m euros. They have also endured annual losses to the tune of 97m euros as well.
When asked if Barcelona may go into administration, Tebas denied.
“Barcelona are not considering insolvency proceedings,” he said. “Their debt might be slightly larger but they were perfectly solvent pre-Covid. But Covid has come along and taken away a lot of revenue. They are not so capable of repaying the debt, so their salary volume has to go down. That is the essential factor for most clubs. It is not because they were mismanaged earlier.”