Seven days. It’s been seven days since the burofax reached Barcelona’s office and the news dissipated through social media that Lionel Messi wanted to call it quits. Seven days and still, there are quite a few fans who simply can’t believe what they’re reading online, what they’re seeing offline and the fact that this could actually happen. Nobody believed it either but then Carles Puyol responded in what was a clear sign of support. Then Luis Suarez responded in what was another clear sign of support but still, a very few believed their eyes.

It probably won’t but the point is made. There’s a clear sign of unhappiness between both parties, especially from the Argentine’s side and who can blame him? The football club he has spent the large majority of his career at has spent the better half of the last decade doing nothing but finding new ways of failing. They’ve been incredibly incompetent and even that’s being nice but all that’s secondary because of the fee that Messi would command.

About 220 million stories have been written about their exploits with what they did with it although few have ignored what Real Madrid, and now Chelsea, have done with their massive sums. They rebuilt their squads and didn’t half-ass it but instead went out, bought the players they believed would help them win. That effectively saw the Los Blancos lift the La Liga title, breaking a two-year drought in the process, although we’re yet to see what Chelsea manage with theirs. The point of this is the fact that Barcelona, in theory, and if they find someone who actually wants Lionel Messi, could get so much money that there’s a chance they may not know what to do with it.

This is a move that their fans, football fans and many others will indubitably hate and nobody will blame them. The romanticism of watching arguably the greatest footballer end his career at the club where he started at is a rarity for the modern fan. The last, famous and incredibly successful, footballer to do it was Francesco Totti. Since he retired in 2017, 25 one club men have done it but imagine if the greatest ever did it. But like many, with a brain, will agree Lionel Messi needs to leave Barcelona. This is not a team that will give the diminutive genius a chance at the sunset ending that his fans want and that he clearly has an inkling for.

Not to mention, they will be quite literally dangling off a beam if this transfer saga unravels the way many expect it to. Like an utterly terrible divorce. Both sides are fighting tooth and nail to stand their ground although in this case, the law is on Barcelona’s side. Even then, thanks to a certain global pandemic, the club are currently walking on troubled financial grounds and thus it makes it tough to engineer a rebuild barring a serious influx of cash. This makes it a lot harder to replace, or even come close to replacing, a retiring Messi than it would be to replace one that disappears alongside his wages and leaves a nice big check behind.

Would his absence be felt? Naturally both on and off the field but Barcelona as a club and the sheer enormity of what Lionel Messi has done over the last dozen or so years have cemented their legacy. They’ll be minting money off that even after he retires to play football in Argentina and even after he retires and disappears off the face of the earth completely. Their stock is secure but right now it looks like, at least to us sitting outside the circle, that the Argentine wants to take his left foot and walk away. In the end, all this, even this article, would mean nothing because this might just be the greatest power play in history.