He was scared of him — Xavi reveals why Laporta 'betrayed' Messi after 2022 World Cup

Legendary Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernández revealed in a bombshell interview that the club had the financial margins to secure Lionel Messi’s return in 2023, but Laporta sabotaged the move, fearing a possible power tussle with the Argentine. 

The football world was shaken in 2021 when a tearful Lionel Messi was forced out of his beloved Barcelona. Crippling club debts and LaLiga’s ruthless financial rules meant the board spectacularly yanked his agreed contract extension at the eleventh hour.

Fast forward to 2023, and a cinematic 'Last Dance' was entirely on the cards. Having just exited PSG as a newly minted World Cup champion, Messi was ready to come home.

However, according to Xavi, head coach at the time, the reunion was practically a done deal, complete with LALIGA green light, but Joan Laporta hit the brakes. 

According to La Vanguardia, Xavi claims that the Barca president deliberately sabotaged the blockbuster return for political reasons. He said Laporta feared Messi’s god-like status would spark a massive power war, choosing to protect his own authority rather than bring the Argentine legend back to Camp Nou.

"Laporta isn’t telling the truth. Leo was already signed,” Xavi revealed. “In January 2023, after he became world champion, we got in touch and he told me he was excited about returning, and I saw it happening. We talked until March, and I told him: ‘When you give me the OK, I’ll tell the president.’

"Laporta started negotiating the contract with Leo’s father, and we had the green light from La Liga, but it was Laporta who ended up pulling everything back.

"Laporta told me, literally, that if Leo returned they would make war against him and he couldn’t allow that. And then suddenly Leo stopped answering my calls because from Laporta's side they had told him it couldn’t happen. 

"I called his father and said, ‘It can’t be, Jorge,’ and he told me, ‘Talk to the president.’ I insisted that we had been talking with Leo for five months, that everything was done, that from a football point of view there were no doubts and economically we were going to move to Montjuïc and do a ‘last dance’ like Jordan’s, everything was prepared. I was dying for Messi to come back so I could coach him, but they turned us against each other.”