Argentinian Leo Messi, now a French PSG player, asked recover with interest (3%) the wage cuts imposed by the pandemic, perceive a 10 million bonus for the renewal or reduce yours to 10,000 euros termination clause to renew his contract with Barça in 2020, according to emails revealed by the magazine ‘El Mundo’.
Among the demands to renew for three years with the possibility on the part of Messi of “a unilateral extension”, there is also the admission of the 20% off of the fixed salary for the 2020-21 season, which would be recovered in the following two financial years with 3% annual interest.
In the emails crossed between the former president Josep Maria Bartomeu, the father and representative of Leo Messi, Jorge; and the Argentinian lawyers, published by ‘El Mundo’, are also requested to pay the “loyalty bonus pending payment with interest”.
Other requests are the provision of one shop at the Camp Nou for the families of Messi and Luis Suárez; the payment of a private flight for Christmas for Messi’s family in Argentina; or the increase in remuneration in the case of a tax increase.
The obligation of renew your assistant, Pepe Costa; or the signing of an undertaking to pay Rodrigo Messi, Messi’s brother, the commissions due.
At the time (2020), Messi had a contract of 74.9 million euros and after various negotiations, the possibility of renewing disappeared. It was later when the player sent, in August 2020, a burofax requesting the club for the letter of freedom.
The Argentine left the Barcelona club the following season and signed for the French PSG, despite the interest of the current president, Joan Laporta, to renew the situation.
The club qualifies the information as “interested leakage”
Barça expressed this Wednesday through a press release indignation before what he qualifies as “la interested leak of information that would form part of a judicial procedure” for the journalistic publication in which the contractual requests of Leo Messi to renew his contract with the Barcelona club in the summer of 2020 are revealed.
“The Club also regrets that the medium boasts of having had access to one huge amount of documentation and e-mails that are in the possession of the Barçagate investigation’ when this information and documentation have not yet been shared with the parties,” he says in a statement.
The Barcelona club considers that the article in question “makes public documents that have nothing to do with the investigation of the case and their use is an attempt against the reputation and confidentiality of the Club“.
For this reason and “with the objective of protecting the rights of FC Barcelona, the legal services of the Club are already studying the appropriate measures to undertake”.
