How planned €400 million bid for Messi made Barcelona broke — Former president reveals

Former Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu recently disclosed the staggering details of a thwarted €400 million bid for Lionel Messi.

Bartomeu revealed in a recent interview that shortly after Paris Saint-Germain triggered Neymar’s world-record €222 million release clause in August 2017, Barcelona received highly credible intelligence that another club was actively preparing to trigger Messi’s €400 million buyout clause.

“A few weeks after Neymar’s departure, rumours began to circulate that a club was preparing €400 million for Messi - the amount of his release clause,” he revealed.

While remaining tight-lipped about the exact identity of the suitor, Bartomeu explicitly insisted that the club was not Manchester City, despite the English giants' own well-documented, multi-year pursuit of the Argentine forward. 

Instead, the former executive hinted at state-sponsored wealth, noting that massive funds from an "Arab country" had already been transferred to European accounts.

To instantly neutralise this massive existential threat, Bartomeu's administration frantically renegotiated Messi's contract in November 2017, raising his release clause to an impenetrable €700 million while significantly boosting his astronomical wages.

In hindsight, had Barcelona actually sanctioned a €400 million sale at that time, it would have fundamentally altered the club's entire financial trajectory and potentially averted their catastrophic economic collapse. 

Instead, the resulting bloated wage bill severely crippled the Catalan giants, directly contributing to a toxic, financially unsustainable environment under Bartomeu that culminated in Messi famously attempting to force an exit via burofax in August 2020.

The financial damage ultimately proved fatal; the massive debt accumulated meant the club was physically incapable of registering the legendary forward, eventually forcing his heartbreaking, free-transfer departure to PSG in August 2021.