One conclusion can be drawn from Thursday’s news about Pep Guardiola’s new 2-year deal… Lionel Messi to Manchester City. This time it is really happening.
Maybe in January, more likely next summer. Undeniably, though, the most logical motivation for Guardiola tying himself to the club until 2023 is the guarantee of this reunion.
The greatest player with the greatest coach. Both titles subjective and hotly disputed but, honestly, who wouldn’t pay to see that?
Pep Guardiola’s new two-year deal points towards Lionel Messi coming to Manchester City.
If Messi is coming to the Premier League, even at the age of 34 as he will be in June, it is box office. And for Guardiola, too, plainly.
Who wouldn’t want to find out what they can achieve in the English game? Who wouldn’t want to work again with such a talent? Just as Guardiola to Manchester City was known long before realisation, so Messi’s arrival has been clearly signposted.
This has been the strategy for close to a decade. This has been on the agenda since Barcelona man Ferran Soriano was appointed chief executive officer at Manchester City. One by one, they have all arrived since.
Txiki Begiristain as director of football, Manuel Pellegrini to keep the manager’s seat warm, Guardiola — and now the cherry on top.
The band is back together; or it soon will be. Messi has always been the target but only now is he attainable.
There was a time when it did not look the smartest move. Messi and the modern Barcelona were inseparable. Any transfer would represent his second-best life. His preference would always be Catalonia and the club that has nurtured him since the age of 13.
Yet that relationship has soured. Clearly, Messi would have left last summer if he could have and the sight of him returning to Barcelona from international duty this week to be met at the airport by tax investigators was a study in disillusionment.
‘I’m a little tired of always being the problem for everything at the club,’ Messi told reporters in response to accusations from Antoine Griezmann’s former agent, Eric Olhats, that he enjoys a ‘reign of terror’.
Barcelona are eighth in LaLiga and all but one of Messi’s six goals this season have come from the penalty spot. Certainly, Manchester City would not be buying a player at his peak.
They may, however, be buying one with a point to prove, who is no longer hankering for the Nou Camp and could receive a fillip from being reunited with Guardiola.
And undoubtedly his former coach has ego enough to believe he is the man who could spark Messi in the Premier League, too
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