Messi tells Barca he wants to leave club

Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest player in soccer history, has informed Barcelona that he intends to leave the club with immediate effect, and to do so by activating a clause in his contract that would mean the team where he has spent his entire career would not receive a cent in compensation.

Messi, 33, has spent the days since Barcelona’s humiliation by Bayern Munich, in the Champions League quarterfinals just over a week ago, watching his club descend into yet another bout of internal turmoil. Quique Setién, the manager, and the sporting director, Eric Abidal, both departed, and Ronald Koeman, a former Barcelona player, was appointed as coach.

Among his first acts was to tell several senior players — Samuel Umtiti, Arturo Vidal, Ivan Rakitic and Messi’s neighbor and close friend, Luis Suárez — that their services were no longer required.

Koeman also spoke with Messi, who at that point had stopped short of committing his future to the club. News reports in Spain suggested that Koeman had warned Messi that he would no longer receive special treatment — a threat, it was suggested, that made up the Argentine’s mind.

Regardless of the trigger, Messi put his decision in writing on Tuesday. Messi’s representatives believe he can act unilaterally, thanks to a clause in his contract that enables him to leave free as long as he announces his intention to do so before the end of the season.

Barcelona is expected to contest quite when the end of the season is. The club probably will argue that the clause expired at the end of June, when the Spanish and European campaigns were scheduled to finish. Messi’s side is reportedly convinced that the exceptional circumstances of a pandemic-delayed season rendered that timing irrelevant.

As Messi developed first into the best player of his generation and then, possibly, into the best in history, so Barcelona was transformed into arguably the most popular sports team in the world.

Messi has previously insisted that he wanted to finish his career at Barcelona — despite suggestions that he would, eventually, return for a season at Newell’s Old Boys, his hometown team — but the chaos of the last few seasons, in which Barcelona has suffered a succession of haunting defeats in the Champions League and run through three managers in the last eight months, appears to have been too much to bear.