I’m disgusted. My heart is freezing over after seeing the disgraceful response of FC Barcelona to Lionel Messi's international retirement. No other player in history has done what Lionel Messi has done at Barcelona, the undisputed GOAT and undoubtedly the biggest legend in the club’s entire existence. The world stood still at the sight of him announcing that it was time to end his international career. Every club with a pulse has acknowledged the magnitude of the occasion.
But one club has not. The only club who has truly built a modern empire on the back of this man: F.C. Barcelona.
The world paused, but Barcelona looked away
Within an hour of the news, the club with whom Messi doesn't have the best of relationship: Paris Saint-Germain, acknowledged this with a classy post about how he changed the game. Even those who were not directly tied to the legend, (Bayern Munich, Napoli etc.) paid homage to his career. Even some official NBA teams recognised that it was a momentous occasion for the world of sports.
And yet, FC Barcelona's official social media timelines are utterly empty. Barcelona had failed to recognise the most legendary achievement of their player, the player who, by all accounts single-handedly built the team into one of Europe's elite, delivering numerous titles and moments of magic that captured the hearts of millions around the world. Yet their timelines could boast of absolutely nothing acknowledging the occasion.
And yet, to compound the already embarrassing insult, Barcelona went even lower.
The deleted comment: lowest point in club’s history
Initial reactions showed that Barcelona had left a brief comment under Messi's social post: and thus one more sign that they are not completely dead inside. Just another crumb of solace for the fans, and then they deleted it.
This is almost inconceivable and shows a level of cold-blooded pettiness that's unheard of in football and truly epitomizes the current regime's failure to give him his emotional send-off without them interfering to assert some sort of imagined sense of superiority.
This is no longer just about poor social media management; this feels like a deliberate act designed to ensure that Messi feels that he is no longer a Barcelona player by any stretch of the imagination, a final stab by a board who can’t grasp that they've let go of an icon in a very unsavory fashion.
Barcelona's motto of "Mes que un club" (More than a club) has never looked less fitting. They are not more than a club. They are the club where a player they have claimed as their own for his entire senior career has just retired from international football and the club's responses are more pathetic than insulting.
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