Lionel Messi to leave Paris Saint-Germain on a free transfer at end of season; French side not planning to offer World Cup winner a new contract after two years at club; Sky Sports News also understands PSG would be willing to listen to offers for Neymar this summer
Thursday 4 May 2023 15:08, UK
With Lionel Messi set to leave Paris Saint-Germain on a free transfer at the end of the season while Neymar faces an uncertain future at the French club, Sky Sports News' chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol assesses where the pair could end up this summer as PSG end their 'bling-bling' culture.
I'm not sure he really wanted to go to PSG to begin with. I think in an ideal world he would have stayed at Barcelona. You saw how emotional it was for him leaving the club after he went for financial reasons - it was a real wrench for him to leave.
He went to PSG where they're set up to win the Champions League and that hasn't happened.
It always felt a bit like a marriage of convenience, and although there was this option for the contract to be extended by a third year, PSG have decided not to activate that extension.
It was a masterstroke to sign him in the first place because they were thinking about the World Cup in Qatar. The owners wanted to make sure that they had most of the best players there playing for PSG, and they had Neymar, the poster boy of Brazilian football, they had Kylian Mbappe and they had Messi. Then they got their dream final, which was Messi versus Mbappe.
Also, from a commercial point of view, PSG have made money. I know they're paying him a phenomenal contract but if you speak to people at PSG, they will say commercially it has been a good deal. For Qatar, meanwhile, it was brilliant marketing and branding so it was a business transaction.
Both parties may be unhappy at the moment, but they both ended up making money out of it and it suited both parties for two years and it's now time to move on.
The sad thing about it all is the way it's ending. PSG's fans have been outside the club's offices chanting abuse about Messi after he was suspended for this unauthorised trip to Saudi Arabia. He can't train, he can't play for two weeks and he's not getting paid.
Will he even play again for PSG? How's he going to react to being suspended? Just a few months on from winning the World Cup in Qatar, playing for a club owned by the Qataris, it's ending really messily.
I don't think that they did. I think PSG are embarking on a new strategy. It was announced last summer that the 'bling-bling' culture was ending. You can see their fans are unhappy and it's turned into a soap opera. It's turned into something out of Hollywood.
They want to have a real football club back and the Qatari owners are saying, 'Okay, we hear you, we're going to change strategy, we're going to invest in the future in the best young French players', because some of the best players in the world are French but not enough of them are ending up at PSG.
A lot of them are born in or around Paris, and I think that is what they're going to be focusing on in the future, building a younger French team.
Did they do all they could to keep Messi? No. They didn't throw as much money at him as he and his advisers would have wanted. PSG certainly didn't do everything to keep him and there are a lot of people that think it's for the best that he leaves.
There are two sides to every story. I think if you speak to Messi's camp, they would say that he's won the title and could win it again this season so he's done what he needed to do but time's running out for him.
He's going to be 36 in June and he wants to explore other possibilities and now is the time for him to make the move.
I think his family are still living in Barcelona so that's another sign that he's not exactly settled and he doesn't love life in Paris. I think it was just a very lucrative short-term arrangement for him.
His camp will tell you it's his decision. He wants to leave but if you speak to people at PSG, the sense there is that it was very much a PSG decision. This was the right time for him to go.
We all know the Saudis are extremely rich, there's a massive push to expand sport and football and they're paying Cristiano Ronaldo an enormous contract at Al Nassr.
I think Al Hilal want to sign Messi. There have been reports that they're willing to pay him a €400m contract for one year. You have to also consider Messi is an ambassador for the Saudi Tourism Authority.
At the moment Saudi Arabia is the hot option for Messi, but having said that, the message coming out of Messi's camp is that he feels that he still has more time at the top level in Europe and he wants to carry on playing in Europe if possible for at least another season for a Champions League club.
I think that would be the dream for him. His family is still there, he was there for 17 years, he scored 762 goals and won six Balon d'Ors. He is Mr Barcelona. It'll be an incredible story if he was to go back there. It would be a fairytale return.
But there are still lots of the problems financially that existed at Barcelona when he left, although the president has restructured things and they've raised money through various ways.
But LaLiga has got very tough financial fair play rules and wage limits. So Barcelona could get him on a free but what about the wages? Can Barcelona afford him?
It might be a case of Messi showing how much he wants to go back to Barcelona and the way to do that is to accept much, much less than he would get paid for playing in Saudi Arabia.
It's a question of what's more important to him at this moment in time: Being back at home with his family at his club Barcelona, or does he want to go to Saudi Arabia?
Inter Miami have been very clear that they want to sign him.
I think he spends a lot of time in Miami and he's reportedly got a holiday home there, so I think MLS is an option.
But I think that he feels that it's still too early in his career to go to MLS. I think that's one for the future, but it's definitely a possibility because Inter Miami have come out and said that they're definitely interested and they have held talks with his representatives.
Man City were interested in signing him last time, so never say never. But realistically, with the kind of wages he's on, which English clubs could afford to sign him?
The only place you could see him going to would be Man City and there's nothing to suggest that Man City are interested in signing him at the moment.
There's that link with Pep Guardiola and it'd be brilliant for the Premier League if he was to come here.
Neymar is facing an uncertain future at PSG. It's the end of the 'bling-bling' culture and they want to move in a different direction so they would be willing to listen to offers for Neymar.
In the past they've been willing to listen to offers for him and things have not been going that great for Neymar.
There were these protests outside of his house on Wednesday by PSG supporters who were chanting, 'Get out of our club'. There was a very strong statement from PSG last night condemning that.
There's a lot of noise around Neymar and I think PSG are thinking they don't need this noise anymore.
I think him leaving would fit in with their new strategy. PSG don't want to be the Harlem Globetrotters or the Dream Team, they want to be the club version of that France side at the World Cup with young, humble and hungry French players.
Hypothetically the Qataris could buy Manchester United and then they move Neymar from PSG to Man Utd to become the face of the new ownership of the club.
An issue, though, would be financial fair play. I don't think Man Utd have the finances, even with the new Qatari owners, to be able to afford to pay somebody an enormous wage and I also don't think he's a real Erik ten Hag kind of player.
But if Neymar is going to leave PSG then Premier League clubs have to come into the mix.
