For many he’s the best football player in the world, for others he’s the greatest player in history, that doesn’t really matter because all of his talking is done on the pitch. Lionel Messi is and has been an elite player for many years now, breaking all sorts of personal and team records with Barcelona, rewriting the team’s history on every game, leading the way for other players and getting complete admiration from rivals.

However, not everything is rainbows and butterflies for Messi in Barcelona, and this is why he requested to leave the team just a few weeks ago, shocking the entire football planet and giving team’s officials and fans a lot to think about.

Things appeared to have really come to an end, rumors were spreading quickly, several teams had offers ready to seduce the Argentinian superstar, like Manchester City in the Premier League, PSG in France, Inter Milan in Italy and even some MLS clubs in the US, they were all dreaming already, with getting the signing of the decade.

In the end Barcelona put their legal team to work and the team blocked any move for Messi, unless he paid a ridiculous amount of money, and that’s why he decided to stay for one more year of contract, he’s back on the pitch doing what he does best, and fans apparently have forgot and forgiven, at least for now, but as the season moves ahead and weeks and months go by, we’re sure we’ll start having this conversation again, and this time, Barcelona might not be able to get their happy ending.

Why did Messi want to leave Barcelona?

Young Lionel Messi arrived in Barcelona at just 13 years of age after the team spotted him in Argentina. The little kid had some growth problems and the team offered to take full care and take him under its wing. Long story short, everything went well and in 2004, Messi got his first-team debut, along with some of the team’s greatest, like Ronaldinho and Eto’o. What happened from then until now is already in the history books, he broke every single team’s record and he’s now considered by many the best player to ever play the game.

Throughout the years, Messi has always preached loyalty to the team that “gave him everything”, but things started to go downhill since a few years ago, due to bad decisions made by team officials ant team President Josep Maria Bartomeu, and before by Sandro Rosell. Little by little all big stars started leaving, Ronaldinho, Puyol, Dani Alves, Xavi, Iniesta, then Neymar surprised us all, opting out of the MSN, which is how they called the teams lethal trio of attackers, Messi, Suarez and Neymar. Bad signings to replace them, bad planning and results, and this all led to Messi not feeling comfortable or even valued anymore by the team, which is why he asked to leave.

Now even Luis Suárez left for Atletico Madrid, and Messi is stuck one more year in Barcelona. Will it be a good year, or will all this affect the player and the team in a negative way? So far, in the few games that have been played, everything seems to be ok, but let’s wait and see when things get a bit complicated, that’s when we’ll know what’s probably going to happen next.