Speaking recently on The Price of Football podcast, finance expert Kieran Maguire discussed Manchester City’s potential move for Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and exactly how City would be able to afford the deal.
In one of the more shocking transfer stories of the summer, Lionel Messi announced last month that he wants to leave the club he has been at since 2000.
However, due to the fact that the 33-year-old earns in the region of €565,000 a week (£502,000 a week) at Barcelona, there are only a few clubs in world football who would theoretically be able to afford the Argentine.
These two clubs are said to be Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, although, it has been reported that Messi is more interested in making a move to the Premier League than the French top flight.
There is some slight confusion as to whether or not Messi will be able to leave Barcelona on a free transfer due to a clause in his contract, or whether any potential buyer will have to meet his €700 million (£623.6 million) release clause.
Despite this uncertainty, it has been reported that the 33-year-old has already agreed a five-year deal with City Football Group, which would see Messi play three years at Manchester City, before spending the last two years at another of the City Group’s clubs, New York City FC.
Speaking on The Price of Football podcast, Kieran Maguire discussed exactly how Manchester City and the City Football Group would be able to afford a player such as Messi.
He said: “There’s a variety of issues here. We don’t know what the transfer fee is going to be, this figure of £623 million is the estimate for around about £100 million of fee to Barcelona, and the rest is going into Lionel Messi’s remuneration package.
“Manchester City – and I counted them – have 43 sponsors and partners. Now, what they could do is that they could go to one of their sponsors – and they can say: ‘This year you’ve got John Stones and Kyle Walker to advertise your noodle company, and the deal we signed was £1.5 million. If you want to double that, we could have a word with Lionel Messi, how do you fancy doing that?’
“You only need half of City’s partners to do that and, all of a sudden, that’s going to bring in an extra £30 or £40 million.
“Also, we then move into the world of the City Football Group – they own seven or eight clubs.
“Realistically, I don’t think Lionel Messi would play in the Premier League for more than three years, but what they could do is get him to sign a five-year deal and at the end of three of those five years, he then hops across to New York, and therefore Manchester City won’t have paid two years of amortisation.
“So, there are ways around this particular deal, which could make it, actually, break-even from City’s perspective.”
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From Maguire’s comments, then, it would certainly seem as if there could be a way for Manchester City to fund a deal for Messi, even if it is slightly complicated and long-winded.
However, we assume that this will only come into play when Messi has sorted out whether or not he can actually leave Barcelona on a free, or if his release clause remains in place.
Regardless of this matter, however, for fans of Manchester City, Maguire’s suggestion that a deal for Messi could theoretically be done must be incredibly exciting news to hear.