Lionel Messi, a legendary player in the history of soccer, is almost certain to win the 2021 Ballon d'Or again after winning the Copa America and being honored with the Golden Boot and Ballon d'Or. This will be the seventh time in his career that he has won the award, and even if he doesn't win the World Cup before he retires, it's an achievement that will be hard to beat in the future.
The next challenge facing Messi now is the renewal of his contract with Barcelona. This effectively means that he needs to be re-registered as a player in the team, a process not dissimilar to bringing in a new recruit, as his contract expired on June 30th of this year and he is effectively no longer a member of Barcelona. The difficulty lies in this "re-registration".
At the launch to introduce new signing Memphis Depay, Barcelona president Laporta confessed, "The players we are bringing in, including Depay, Aguero and Garcia, are all registerable. We understand the limitations of the rules, it's a legacy of our history."
However, things are not that simple.
Journalist Shay Lugassi has revealed that Laporta has become anxious about the current state of affairs at Barcelona, with the renewal of Lionel Messi's contract and the handling of players such as Umtiti and Philippe Coutinho yet to be resolved.
The likes of Umtiti were reluctant to leave, while veterans such as Pique refused to accept a pay cut.
Daily Sport pointed out that old players such as Piqué and Busquets were neither willing to take a pay cut nor to renew their contracts under the original contract. This puts Barcelona management in an extremely passive situation in the locker room. The club now urgently needs the players to reduce their salaries, and if an agreement cannot be reached with the players, Laporta will have to take drastic measures.
Sky Sports are reporting that at least nine players, including Griezmann, Philippe Coutinho and Dembele, will be cleansed from the squad this summer.
At the moment, there has been almost zero progress in getting high earners to take pay cuts and sell unnecessary players. There are only three weeks left before the start of the new season.
ESPN raised the question of whether Messi might have to wait until January of next year to register his new contract.
The deadline for Liga MX registration is the end of August, more than two weeks after the start of the new season.
Would Messi be willing to wait until the following January if Barcelona can't complete his registration by August 31?
Messi is leaning towards staying at Barcelona this summer, willing to take a half-pay cut and also remain patient, but he may not be willing to wait five months without a game to play.
Messi may then have only two choices: either go elsewhere before the end of August to ensure that he has time to complete his registration before his new owner's league reaches the registration date and avoid five months without a game to play, or agree to sign a significantly lower-paying contract at Barcelona so that Barcelona can complete his registration under the salary cap restrictions and agree to leave Barcelona with a new contract to compensation for this money.
If there are only two options above. The first, Messi would have to hurry, there are not many potential underlings interested in him and able to offer a big contract. The second, a significant pay cut, may be much lower than his original salary based on half of the 30 million euros per year, may be less than 10 million euros, the contract period will not be Messi hope that 5 years, but 2 years, Messi will accept this almost "shame" contract?
This left Barcelona, not Messi's first choice. Signing a short-term contract with a large pay cut, Messi is afraid that it is also difficult to pull down the face. But these two are not the first choice, are more realistic than let Messi five months do not play soccer.
Next, it's up to Laporta to respond to this crisis!
