Barcelona is preparing a pending farewell tribute match to Lionel Messi for 2024 after the controversial departure of the footballer from the Catalan club in June 2021, when he was released and joined Paris Saint Germain.
"The idea that Joan Laporta, president of Barcelona, likes the most so that the Catalans can pay tribute to Messi is for the 2024-25 season, when the team returns to the Camp Nou with the works already completed and coinciding with the 125th anniversary. of the club", published this Thursday the Catalan newspaper Mundo Deportivo. Although there is no confirmation on the subject, in Spain they assure that Jorge Messi, father and representative of the star, would have met with Joan Laporta. This idea of the tribute would have been one of the topics in the conversation he would have had a few days ago with the Barcelona president where -according to the media- both parties met to try to "normalize" relations and bring positions closer.
The information recalls that Messi parted ways with Barcelona when, after "negotiating" his continuity, he was told by the club that "his contract could not be renewed" and the Argentine star left "in tears." Laporta himself confessed after that situation that he still has a "thorn in" with Messi and that he wants to remove it.
For his part, Jorge Messi, when he arrived in Barcelona a few days ago, stated a few weeks ago that he did not believe his son would play for Barcelona again: "The conditions are not met," he said.
For this reason, and apart from "testing" the plans of the future Messi (with a contract at PSG until June of this year), Laporta's interest was mainly focused on talking about the tribute match that Barcelona has pending so that the Argentine can being fired by the Catalan fans.
Messi played almost two decades at the club and it was with the culés fans with whom he shared most of his sporting achievements.
Lionel Messi's father, in Barcelona: the details of his trip
Jorge Messi, father of Lionel Messi, is in Barcelona: he traveled to Catalonia, just the day after PSG suffered a heavy blow in the 1-0 defeat against Bayern Munich, as a local, for the first leg of the round of 16 of the Champions League.
The father and representative of the captain of the Argentine National Team arrived in the Catalan city on Monday night. At the airport, he avoided answering the questions of the journalists who were waiting for him to ask him about the future of his son.
Beyond the expectation that aroused, Jorge Messi did not arrive with the intention of meeting with Joan Laporta (president of the institution) or any Barcelona manager to discuss a possible return of the Rosario star to the club, according to what they told TyC Sports.