LAST UPDATE | 4 Sep 2020
LIONEL MESSI HAS reversed his decision to leave Barcelona this summer, saying he could never go to court against the club to secure a move.
The Argentinian forward had informed the club on 25 August that he wanted to leave this summer and intended to utilise a clause in his contract which he and his representatives claimed allowed him to walk away on a free transfer.
Barcelona insisted the time had passed for the clause to be activated and that Messi would need to pay the €700 million release clause in his contract if another club wanted to sign him this summer.
Messi, who has been with the Catalan club since the age of 13, told Goal.com: “When I communicated my wish to leave to my wife and children, it was a brutal drama.
“The whole family began crying, my children did not want to leave Barcelona, nor did they want to change schools.
But I looked further afield and I want to compete at the highest level, win titles, compete in the Champions League. You can win or lose in it, because it is very difficult, but you have to compete.
“At least compete for it and let us not fall apart in Rome, Liverpool, Lisbon. All that led me to think about that decision that I wanted to carry out.”
🚨 WORLD EXCLUSIVE 🚨
— Goal (@goal) September 4, 2020
Lionel Messi will NOT be leaving Barcelona, we can confirm.
We sat down with the man himself to clear up a few things 🐐
Here's what he had to say: pic.twitter.com/NfnhGpZpXc
“I thought and was sure that I was free to leave, the president always said that at the end of the season I could decide if I stayed or not,” he added.
“Now they cling to the fact that I did not say it before 10 June, when it turns out that on 10 June we were competing for La Liga in the middle of this awful coronavirus and this disease altered all the season.
And this is the reason why I am going to continue in the club. Now I am going to continue in the club because the president told me that the only way to leave was to pay the €700 million clause, and that this is impossible.
“There was another way and it was to go to trial,” he added. “I would never go to court against Barca because it is the club that I love, which gave me everything since I arrived.
“It is the club of my life, I have made my life here. Barca gave me everything and I gave it everything. I know that it never crossed my mind to take Barca to court.”
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