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Lionel Messi’s father offers huge update on potential Barcelona return.
Lionel Messi’s father revealed that his son will be returning to Barcelona this summer.
Following a two-year stay at Paris Saint-Germain, Messi has already declared his exit from the club in the hopes of securing a return to Camp Nou for the upcoming season.
Re-signing Barcelona has made Messi one of their main goals this summer, but the Blaugrana have been waiting for La Liga to approve their financial plan after being temporarily barred from signing new players due to breaching their pay ceiling.
The league winners will start negotiating a deal for Messi as soon as La Liga, according to reports, approves of Barcelona’s plans. Messi’s father met with Barcelona president Joan Laporta on Monday.
In fact, Toni Juanmarti recorded the encounter between Laporta and Messi’s father, Jorge, and later spoke with the elder Messi.
“Messi wants to return to Barça and I would love for him to come back,” Jorge said. “It is an option.”
Jorge later told Jijantes FC: “We trust that Messi can return.”
Due to their financial difficulties, Messi left Barcelona in 2021. Barcelona is optimistic that they will be able to re-sign him. They will also use their newfound flexibility to finalize contract extensions for other first-team stars.
Both centre-back Ronald Araujo and midfielder Gavi had long-term extensions agreed to months prior, but Barcelona’s attempts to register those agreements were thwarted by La Liga, who forbade the team from increasing its payroll when it was already above its quota.
Since that time, Barcelona has put in a lot of effort behind the scenes to show La Liga that they can fund their ambitions, and the recent exits of both Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba have been very helpful in that regard.
Barcelona will start pursuing a number of additional transfer targets once discussions with Messi are over, but registering Gavi and Araujo’s contracts is at the top of the list.
Inigo Martinez of Athletic Club might sign after announcing his exit from the Basque team this summer. Barcelona is also interested in Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan of Manchester City.