There was a subdued yet moving mini-standing ovation from his peers and his family who were in attendance. He stood at the podium, in tears, after visibly struggling through his opening remarks. The greatest player to ever play for the club. Leaving like that. None of it felt right. None of this is right.
I never wanted to write this, but like with Lionel Messi, FC Barcelona gave me no choice. Watching the departure of the Argentinian superstar from the only football club he has ever played for professionally was like watching the last season of Game of Thrones. An incredible story inevitably coming to an end, but with a conclusion so unsatisfying and unpleasant that it raises the question why you bothered to care about it in the first place.
Messi’s last press conference at Camp Nou confirmed once and for all the news about his departure from Barcelona. A departure due to “financial and structural obstacles” that the club faced from the Spanish league. In fact, it was because of the careless and evidently incompetent way this club has been run over the past 5-6 years. The unbelievably myopic manner in which they kept making poor signings on unnecessary players with minimal returns on the pitch. The fact that they kept paying exorbitant wages and kept hemorrhaging money with no Plan B even before the pandemic. The reality that every year the team kept finding a new way to crash out of the Champions League and more recently even underperformed on the domestic stage. And the sad truth that one point it got so bad Messi wanted out but ultimately yielded to the club out of good faith.
He wanted to leave last year, but he wasn’t allowed to. Now he wants to stay, but the club can’t keep him. It’s an outrageous twist of fate that wouldn’t feel out of place in an over-the-top soap opera, or in an underwhelming final season of a long-running and successful drama. But as anti-climactic as this end is, it is an end nonetheless. They will call it the end of an era. For me, it is the end of something more.
After this bombshell of a story broke a few days earlier, I didn’t know how to process it. First, disbelief in the overall situation. Sure, he’s leaving.I’ve seen this before. Then, anger at the club. How could it get this far? Confusion at the La Liga rules. More disbelief. More anger. Some laughter. Some bitterness. Then just apathy. I didn’t want to care. I didn’t feel like caring. The whole thing was a giant mess and I didn’t care enough to try and understand it.
Then today Messi spoke from inside the Camp Nou, a few hundred meters away from where he made his living for more than half of his life. I saw the writing on the wall as it had been written gradually yet irrevocably over the past few days. So it didn’t break any more news, but his press conference just reiterated the simple fact of how much Messi still cared for this club. After all this time, after achieving everything there is to achieve in the game and after becoming one of the greatest to ever play it. After all the good and a bit of the bad and a whole lot of ugly, he still cared.
The pain was palpable on his face and it reminded me that I wasn’t actually apathetic. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to care. I just wanted to conveniently ignore all the emotions associated with an event of this magnitude. Messi and Barcelona are so inextricably linked together that it’s hard to put into words. I expanded my sports horizons beyond cricket because of Messi. I came to appreciate the game of football because of Messi. I grew to love and support Barcelona because of Messi. And there are countless others who probably feel the same. Watching him play in anything other than the Barcelonashirt just won’t feel right.
And today, as Messi bids farewell to his beloved club, his home, and the city of Barcelona, none of this feels right. This wasn’t how one of the all-time great club careers was supposed to end. In front of a smattering of people, off the field, without any fans, without one last match-winning goal, one last jaw-dropping dribbling run past five defenders, one last free kick into the top corner, one last heroic moment at the El Clásico, one last trophy for the Blaugrana. Without a proper farewell, a guard of honor, and a crowd singing his name. It shouldn’t have ended this way. But things don’t always happen how they are supposed to. That much we all have learnt these past 18 odd months.
Leo Messi is leaving Barcelona after 21 years. But as a famous Bollywood movie says, if the end doesn’t feel right, then it’s not the end.
Visca el Barça!
Messi is Forever…