Football journalist Adam Crafton has been sharing his thoughts on the possibility of Barcelona winger Lionel Messi making a move to Manchester City this summer.
This comes after Crafton recently made an appearance on a bonus episode of The Athletic’s Ornstein & Chapman Podcast where he spoke about the Barcelona man’s current situation at the Spanish club.
After it was recently revealed that Messi has made it clear to Barcelona that he wants to leave the club, Crafton shared his thoughts on the possibility of him joining Pep Guardiola’s side this summer.
He said: “On Tuesday afternoon, things started coming out about Manchester City making contact with people in Messi’s camp. I think everyone’s initial reaction was scepticism because we’ve heard this so many times over the years, Messi used to play under Pep Guardiola, He loves Guardiola, Ferran Soriano is the chief executive at City. Txiki Begiristain is the sporting director, there’s this whole Catalan enclave at City and it almost feels like for years people have put two and two together and come up with five.
“On this occasion, I think it is now clear, despite City, I know on Tuesday night, were distancing themselves from a move, but I think it’s clear they have had held exploratory talks internally about whether this would be possible so they would obviously be one very clear alternative and we know they also have the financial means to do it, how they would manage to do it within financial fair play if they also had to pay £170 million is a whole other question.”
Messi made his senior debut for Barcelona back in 2004, since then, the 33-year-old, who is currently valued at £100.8 million, has scored 634 goals in 731 total appearances.
Throughout his career, the winger has won a lot of trophies at the Spanish club, as well as many individual awards, which includes six Ballon d’Or awards (per Transfermarkt).
In 2009 and 2011, Messi won two Champions League titles at Barcelona playing under Guardiola, beating Manchester United on both occasions.
Do you think Man City would be Messi's first choice club to move to this summer?
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TIF Thoughts…
With Messi having previously played under Guardiola at Barcelona, you would think that he may well be open to the idea of reuniting with his former manager and having a go at playing in the Premier League for a period of time. It will be intriguing to see where Messi ends up this summer if he does leave, having been at Barcelona for such a long time.