This being Holy Week it is perhaps appropriate for messianic figures, recently lauded to the heavens, to be jeered and abused. Lionel Messi got his dates all wrong however.
Palm Sunday is meant to be the day of acclamation from the crowds. Instead, last Sunday the man who was elevated to the status of a demigod in Qatar in December, was being whistled and jeered by his own fans.
And that was before the game had even kicked off. By the end, it was worse. He got 3/10 from L’Equipe and lost the ball 26 times as Paris St Germain slumped to a 1-0 home defeat to Lyon, their sixth defeat in ten games in all competitions.
Le Ligue being what it is, PSG will still probably win the title, though the visit of second place Lens, six points behind, later this month now looks intriguing.
Messi seems to be bearing the brunt of discontent over a decade of excess and under achievement at PSG, if you can count eight league titles in twelve years under the Qatari owners as such.
Lionel Messi seems to be bearing the brunt of discontent over a decade of excess and under achievement at PSG
The Argentine was elevated to demigod status after lifting the World Cup back in December
The failure of the Galatico Model – Messi! Neymar! Donnarumma! Ramos! Mbappe! – shouldn’t come as a surprise. The original Galaticos at Real Madrid didn’t win anything after David Beckham arrived. It was almost like a team of celebrity footballers didn’t have the right balance of personalities to thrive.
The Palm Sunday jeers and whistles pose hard questions both for QSI, the Qatari owners of PSG and for Messi. If we can all agree that the Christmas World Cup was the glorious apex to his career, a fairy-tale ending in a sport that doesn’t always deliver Hollywood finales (ask Steven Gerrard), Messi’s subsequent meandering through Le Ligue games since then might have been expected.
In reality, it’s over for Messi. Not that he couldn’t make a contribution again and it’s not to say he won’t elsewhere and there is a Copa America in 2024 to defend. But in his mind, he must be spent.
What more can he do? He really has won it all. He completed football. There is no longer any nagging sense of failed destiny. No need for further chapters. The story is written. The ending was perfect. Despite the messianic allusions, he is human. At a certain point, the mind can’t keep pushing.
It is also normal in psychological terms to fall into a rut of existential questioning immediately after a career high. And they don’t come much higher nor as public as Messi’s.
When he came back to Paris in January, the momentum of Qatari owners celebrating a successful (in their eyes) World Cup suggested another season at PSG. Yet that love has swiftly died. It seems inconceivable either he or his family would want another year in Paris as a symbol of underperforming excess.
Emmanuel Petit’s barbed comments about the club at the weekend certainly have a ring of truth them. ‘It’s not a football club,’ said Petit. ‘It’s a pre-retirement club.’
Barcelona are making eyes at the Messi family again, though this must surely be political expediency rather than a rational assessment of options for next season? ‘Beautiful stories deserve a happy ending,’ said Barca vice president Rafa Yuste last week. (Spoiler alert, Rafa: we had that at the World Cup).
Barcelona’s First Vice President Rafa Yuste (L) claimed that ‘beautiful stories deserve a happy ending’
Barcelona are making eyes at their all-time top scorer Messi once again over a potential return
The 35-year-old’s future is uncertain with his contract in the French capital up at the end of the season
This though is the club that currently can’t register their star 18-year-old player, Gavi, because they have bust their budget under La Liga’s Financial Fair Play rules and so could lose him as a free agent in the summer.
If you’re breaking the bank – that may well be literal in Barca’s case rather than just a metaphor – to sign a man who is 36 in June and letting a brilliant 18-year-old go for free as a consequence, you deserve what you get.
Not least with UEFA looming ominously over the club with the threat of expulsion from the Champions league over allegations of corrupt payments to referees’ chief, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira.
If not Barca, then maybe Inter Miami. Or he could join Cristiano Ronaldo in Saudi Arabia but at Al Hilal, so the pair could resume their rivalry in their dotage at opposing clubs funded by owners connected to the human-rights-abusing dictatorship and pick up £350million-a-year each. And what could be happier or more beautiful than that?
As for PSG, they will move on from coach Christophe Galtier in the next weeks or at the end of the season, having disposed of Laurent Blanc, Unai Emery, Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino.
If even Carlo Ancelotti can’t get your club to work, you might conclude that coaches aren’t the issue. Or as Petit put it: ‘They need a squad built around Messi, which they don’t have and won’t ever have because [the management] are terrible in the market.’
Phil Neville’s Inter Miami remains a potential destination for Messi at the end of the season
Les Parisiens will likely part ways with Christophie Galtier in the coming weeks or at the end of the season
Messi could move to Saudi Arabia and join former rival Cristiano Ronaldo on a big-money deal
It is long been a bugbear of mine and one articulated last week in a rival publication that if any super club genuinely wanted to field home-grown eleven and could do so without impairing their quality, then PSG is that club, Paris being the undisputed hotbed of young European football talent and having only one significant team.
Currently starring at other clubs but missed by PSG scouts are Jules Kounde, William Saliba, Ibrahima Konate, N’Gole Kante. Riyad Mahrez, Randal Kolo Muani and Christopher Nkunku. All were born in Paris, as was Paul Pogba.
Kylian Mbbape, another Parisien, ended up at Monaco before they had to buy him back, Kingsley Coman left their youth ranks to join Juventus and they sold Adrien Rabiot. Find a goalkeeper and it would be quite the starting eleven.
In 2018 it was revealed that a senior member of PSG’s scouting team was illegally racially profiling youth recruits and another official spoke of ‘too many West Indians and Africans in Paris.’ So racism isn’t just wrong but stupid too.
It should be recorded that the staff in question have left, the scout in charge of the Paris region spoke out against the racist comments, arguing that talent should be the only criteria and that the club disavowed the language and methodology.
The test as to how serious they are will be how well they have recruited since 2018 and whether they can actually find pathways for those players. So whether they are an actual football club or just an extension of an energy-rich nation’s ego.
What will really sting for Nasser Al-Khelaifa, Qatar’s president of the club, given the regional rivalry, is that for all the brickbats thrown at Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners, one thing they have right is building a solid foundation and avoiding a culture of excess.
What will sting for Nasser Al-Khelaifi is the fact Man City have created a solid foundation
N’Golo Kante is one of several elite players starring at other clubs but missed by PSG scouts
Kylian Mbbape, another Parisien star, ended up at Monaco before they had to buy him back
Jack Grealish did cost £100m but for their next most expensive signing – in terms of fees paid to clubs (as opposed to agents, which took the Erling Haaland deal to £85m) – is back in 2015 when they paid Wolfsburg £68m for Kevin de Bruyne.
Back then, that was a lot of money. But it worked out reasonably well spread over eight years. They have also brought through Phil Foden, though we should reserve judgement on their academy until we see just what futures Rico Lewis, Cole Palmer Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Liam Delap have.
At present PSG stand as the ultimate symbol of the Disneyfication of football, winning trophies only in their own Magic Kingdom – even then not every year – and displaying the mental rigidity of Goofy when it comes to sparring with the big boys of Europe. In that, they do at least share DNA with Manchester City.
At least someone in the rebel alliance is prepared to take on the might of the Death Star, with SC Freiburg’s extra time penalty knocking Bayern Munich out of the German Cup on Tuesday night. It is now almost a relief when Bayern don’t win and as such last weekend’s Bundesliga action came as a grave disappointment.
Just when you thought it might be interesting, along comes Dortmund keeper Gregor Kobel to ruin it. With Bayern Munich faltering – relatively speaking – in their domination and with Borussia Dortmund having won nine and drawn one since the World Cup, Saturday’s Allianz Arena clash looked a proper contest.
Thomas Tuchel’s Bayern Munich were beaten in the DFB Pokal by Freiburg after a late penalty
Gregor Kobel’s inexplicable blunder in goal for Borussia Dortmund gifted Bayern the opener in Der Klassiker
Bayern lead the Bundesliga title race by just two points but it would take a dramatic momentum turn to miss out now
At least it did for all of 13 minutes, which is when Kobel inexplicably came running out of goal and air kicked, as the ball bounced past him for Bayern to take the lead. Ten minutes later it was 3-0 and the game, which ended 4-2, was effectively over.
Dortmund just can’t get past their mental block at Bayern. They seemed to be accelerating towards their first title since 2012 but instead sped off the edge of a cliff in that ten-minute spell.
They are still only two points behind but it would now take a dramatic momentum shift to recover and prevent Bayern winning an eleventh successive title.
Even the Bundesliga’s strongest advocates would have to admit that’s a decade of dysfunction in terms of competitive balance.
SRC: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/
