If there was still a doubt in the past 48 hours, there is total clarity now: Lionel Messi will not be a Paris Saint-Germain player next season.
The Argentina international’s contract expires in June and even if the club and player had agreed in principle back in November to continue the adventure together, things have changed dramatically since the turn of the year. It’s over and those relationships have fractured, so Team Messi will begin figuring out where he will be playing for the 2023-24 season.
The latest chapter in the difficult relationship between Messi and PSG is also, in essence, the last straw for the club, so let’s review where things went wrong.
The 2022 World Cup winner has been suspended for two weeks after missing Monday’s training session without permission because of sponsorship obligations in Saudi Arabia. He will not be paid, and he will not be allowed to train or play with the first team. Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the PSG chairman, was on a business trip in the U.S. when he heard of Messi’s absence, and he decided to be tough.
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The instructions from the coaching staff were clear: if PSG beat Lorient this past Sunday, the players would have Monday and Tuesday off. If they didn’t, they would only have Tuesday off. In the end, they lost 3-1 at home in the Parc des Princes, turning in one of their worst performances of the season. Achraf Hakimi was sent off for two bookable offenses inside the opening 20 minutes following Lorient’s early goal, and things quickly unraveled even after Kylian Mbappe equalized.
For too long, the French champions have been notoriously lenient with their star players. Many superstars, especially Neymar, got away with plenty of ill discipline. Not this time. The liberties taken by the World Cup winner were seen as a step too far, which is why the club took the stance of setting an example. Never since the Qatari owners took over the club, back in 2011, had a player been suspended in this manner and for this long. Yet it’s now happened, and it’s been done to the greatest player of all time.
