Barcelona Still Owns Lionel Messi Outstanding Payments

• FC Barcelona will continue to pay Lionel Messi through 2025.
• Messi chose to join Inter Miami instead of Barcelona.
• Messi wanted to make his own decision about his future.

The club will continue to pay former FC Barcelona player Lionel Messi through 2025, FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta announced on Monday.

The Catalan club is still owing money to Messi, 36, who departed the team in 2021.

“What is owed to him is the deferral of wages that was agreed with the previous board and that produces outstanding payments that end in 2025,” Laporta told the Spanish news agency.

The president also discussed Messi’s choice of Inter Miami over Barcelona in Major League Soccer (MLS), claiming that the Argentine footballer sought “less pressure” after two trying years in Paris.

“We had an agreement with LaLiga that we would dedicate part of the resources we have to Messi,” Laporta said.

“It was included in the viability plan. We communicated it to Jorge Messi, who told me that Messi had had a very difficult year in Paris and that he wanted less pressure.

“With our option, he would have continued to be under pressure and I understood his decision [to go to Inter Miami].”

The seven-time Ballon d’Or winner was frequently connected with the Catalan club after leaving the French club Paris Saint-Germain in June, but the deal never materialized because Messi insisted he didn’t want to repeat what happened in 2021.

“I really wanted to return, I was very excited to be able to return, but, on the other hand, after having experienced what I experienced when I left, I didn’t want to be in the same situation again. I didn’t want to leave my future in someone else’s hands,” Messi told Spanish media on June 7.

“Although I heard that it was said that La Liga had accepted everything and that everything was fine for me to return, there were still many other things that had to happen.

“I wanted to make my own decision and that’s why I didn’t return to Barca. Although I would have loved it, it couldn’t be,” he added.