Messi, the last match at PSG is also the end of the marketing team – Corriere.it

PARIS Not even his farewell succeeded. The two years of Lionel Messi in Paris they were a disappointment, a missed appointment from start to finish. The one against Clermont Ferrand, on Saturday evening, will be the last match in the Paris Saint-Germain shirt, everyone knew it, but there was no official announcement.

It was the coach Christophe Galtier who gave the news awkwardly (another bankrupt about to leave the club): in the last press conference, almost en passant, he announced that PSG-Clermont would be Messi’s last match at the Parc des Princes. For this season, he wanted to specify the company, annoyed with Galtier. the games are done, Messi will leave Paris to return to Barcelona or more likely to go to David Beckham’s Inter Miami (there is also the Saudi Arabia option)

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But Paris Saint-Germain would have liked to communicate it in another way, without relying on a half gaffe by a Galtier contested by the fans and always uncomfortable in press conferences. Messi was signed two seasons ago with a pharaonic contract (30 million euros net per year, bonuses excluded) with the explicit task of bringing the Champions League to Paris, the trophy that would finally give PSG the international stature demanded by the Qatar Sport Investment fund in exchange for the billions in investments from 2011 to today. And both times PSG came out almost immediately, in the round of 16, first eliminated by Real Madrid after good chances and a psychodrama, eqhis year from Bayern Munich without ever having had a real chance. Everyone’s fault, Neymar’s constant injuries, Donnarumma’s mistakes and Sergio Ramos’ tiredness, but also Messi’s fault, whom Parisian fans always see walking, trotting, waiting for the sudden flushes that gave the Argentina national team the Copa America and the World Cup in Qatar, and who have never seen each other with the PSG shirt.

The failure of the Messi operation also the failure of the dream team management, the idea that it is enough to buy the most famous champions for hundreds of millions to secure a place among the greats of Europe and the world. a strategy that certainly sells many shirts, perfect for marketing but ineffective for winning gamesespecially those of international importance. Thus we arrive at the paradox that Messi’s last match in Paris will be one of celebrations for yet another national championship won – the eleventh, and the ninth of the Qatar era – and also of failures, disappointment and possible boos at the Argentine star, already harshly contested at the stadium on April 2 after their elimination in the Champions League, and on May 3 in front of the club’s headquarters in Boulogne, when angry fans shouted Messi go away.

Messi, like Neymar, has become the symbol of the tired champion, who doesn’t want to spend himself for a team that is struggling to give itself a sporting identity. A team that has a budget around ten times that of Racing Club de Lens (700 million against 62 million euros) but which had to suffer until matchday 37 to clinch the title, and losing the French Cup by hand of arch-rivals Marseille. It was known that Messi was shy and certainly not a crowd-puller. But, in addition to forgetting the flashes that made him the immense champion who was also capable of deserting training after a defeat and a bad performance, to go to Saudi Arabia (also a rival of Qatar) to honor his contract as testimonial of the Ministry of Tourism of Riyadh. Saturday night ends two years to forget. The hope of the fans that the Messi experience will definitively destroy the idea of ​​a team only as a collection of stickers, as a marketing exercise, to finally begin to think about sport too and to field motivated players, hungry for victories, with a project consistent technique.