Messi cannot win the Ballon d’Or: the bad end of an era

We define the end of an era in football. The last time Leo Messi had not entered a list of the Golden Ball Zinedine Zidane was still playing football, Italy had to win his last World Cup, Zlatan Ibrahimovic was 24 years old and he was at Juventus, Barcelona had won a Champions only.

It was 2005 and Ronaldinho won the Ballon d’Or in front of Lampard and Gerrard. On 1 May of that year Messi scored his first official goal for Barça, at Albacete. Assist from Ronaldinho and an enchanting lob. A jewel.

A year ago Messi left Barcelona after scoring 672 goals. And having won 7 Ballon d’Ors, most of all. In 2005 the winning record was 3, shared by Van Basten, Platini and Cruijff. Messi made the wrong choice a year ago, and he pays the consequences.

Leo’s absence is associated with Neymar’s, but the weight is different. Because the Brazilian has been down for a while: he had been out of 30 already in 2019 and after the 2020 non-assignment a year ago he had finished 16th. Fixed in the standings since 2011, O Ney had finished third in 2015, the year of the second treble of Barça with the stellar attack Messi-Suarez-Neymar, and second in 2017. The year in which he left Barcelona because he wanted to get out of the cumbersome shadow of the Argentine flea and go to win Champions and Ballon d’Or . PSG paid the termination clause set by Barça at 222 million, and the story went bad for everyone. The Parisians have not yet won the Champions League, Neymar is no longer even in the Top 10 of the prize in the meantime returned to France Football. Barça squandered the money. Here is the end of an era also represented numerically. But it was the field that decreed it. Let’s take Messi. Another who, like his friend Neymar, exchanged the Camp Nou with the Parc des Princes for abundant and safe money and trophies that first proved to be uncertain and then unattainable, apart from the obvious and internationally useless Ligue 1.

Messi between 2017 and 2021 at Barcelona had only grossed 110 million euros in gross salary per season. Money that the Catalan club overwhelmed by the pandemic could no longer afford. Leo offered an incredible salary cut, but the new Blaugrana president Joan Laporta was hoping for more, in a symbolic gesture for the club that had nurtured and raised him. And the relationship of the two fell apart.

Messi went to Paris with his children crying and his snout wife. And he too darkened, so much so that he scored the misery of 6 (six) goals in his first French championship. The same 6 goals he had scored in La Liga in the 2005-2006 season, the first in the first team ended with the conquest of the Champions League, in Paris. In the last season at Barcelona Messi’s goals in the league had been 30, 5 times more than in France. The Champions? Closed in the second round at the Bernabeu against the future champion Madrid. The worst that can be wished for someone who lived 20 years in Barcelona dressed in blaugrana.

L’Equipe, annoyed by the Argentine’s disinterested walks through the French fields, reminded him and reproached him throughout the year with 3 in the report card salary, status and glorious past. And France Football after having crowned him for the seventh time less than 9 months ago yesterday even left him out of 30. Together with his Brazilian snack partner, one who seems to have long lost interest in his profession, so much so that the Psg tried to download it. Impossible with that salary. Leo and Ney, negative symbols to oppose the enfant du pays Kylian Mbappé, in love with Paris and France. One who had turned 7 at the end of 2005.