Messi officially told Barcelona he wants to leave

[Don Giovanni]

So it's official, Messi has enacted a clause in his contract to leave on a free transfer.

[Dikefale11]

Has Manchester City written all over him if he does leave.

They desperately want a Champions League, he is getting long in the tooth and wants to win it again to catch CR7.
Then you have Guardiola.
Then the argument that he cant cut it in England.

This will drag on for a while non the less.

[Don Giovanni]

Amazingly this keeps happening at Barcelona. Maradona, Ronaldo, Figo, Neymar... were talking players who were considered the very best in the world the very year they left. It very nearly happened with Rivaldo under van Gaal. There is a culture that exists around the board of the club that keeps leading to these problems.

Koeman, the new Barcelona coach, told Messi he would have to work harder for his team on the pitch. After Suarez was deemed surplus by Koeman too, I think Messi decided that was it. I think the board should have resigned before any new manager was hired.

I don't know if Guardiola will give Messi as much freedom. Guardiola, like Koeman, may demand that he run and cover ground, at least more than he's now accustomed to, but for Messi to dribble past 5-6 players like he did against Napoli, he needs to walk around the pitch and leave the hard running off the ball to his teammates.

The romantic in me would like him to stay at Barcelona, but he's all but certain to leave and Manchester City is probably the best club for him.

[Dean97]

He’s most likely going to Man City.

[Don Giovanni]

I see a lot of conflicting reports about whether he's allowed to leave or not. La Liga and Barcelona are convinced they have the law on their side, while Messi believes his yearly month of May release clause could qualify under extenuating circumstances due to the pandemic.

[Don Giovanni]

So he's staying, but there's a good probability he'll be leaving when his contract is up at the end of this season. He had this to say in an interview with Goal:

We were sure I was a free agent. The president always said at the end of the season I could decide if I wanted to stay or not. And now they hold on to the fact that I did not say it before June 10. But in June we were still competing in La Liga in the middle of this f****** virus. That had changed all the dates.'

'You can win or lose but you have to be able to compete and not have what happened in Rome and Liverpool,'

'The truth is that there has been no clear project here for a long time, they juggle and plug holes with no real plan.'