Lionel Messi signs for Paris Saint-Germain after leaving Barcelona
The signing of icon Lionel Messi has sent French football fans into a frenzy at his unveiling. And the former Barcelona superstar has his sights set on one thing in particular.
Lionel Messi set his sights on more Champions League glory after being unveiled as a Paris Saint-Germain player on Wednesday as hundreds of fans gathered outside the club’s stadium hoping to see their new idol.
The 34-year-old Argentinian superstar was presented to media from all over the world at a news conference at the Parc des Princes after arriving in the French capital the previous day and penning a two-year contract with the option of a third season.
PSG quickly emerged as the favourites to sign Messi following the shock of his departure last week from Barcelona and he arrives eyeing a fifth Champions League, with the most recent of his four victories with his old club coming in 2015.
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“I have said many times that my dream is to win another Champions League and I think I am in the ideal place to have that chance and to do it,” Messi told reporters inside a packed auditorium, with the audience including his wife Antonella, their children, and his father and agent, Jorge.
Messi and Barcelona were knocked out of the Champions League last season by PSG, who went on to reach the semi-finals following their run to the final in 2020.
“Sometimes you can have the best team in the world and not win. That’s football,” Messi, who won 35 trophies in total with Barca, added as he prepares to team up with Neymar and Kylian Mbappe in Paris.
“We know how difficult the Champions League is but Paris know that too -- they have come very close in recent years but it is a competition in which the best teams take part and the best team doesn’t always win.”
Messi-mania
PSG are reportedly paying 35 million euros ($41 million) a year to Messi, who will wear the number 30 jersey - disbelieving fans were already queueing up outside the club’s different shops in the capital on Wednesday morning to buy the shirt with his name and number on the back.
Messi was given a hero’s welcome when he arrived in Paris on Tuesday, greeting supporters at the airport and then waving from the balcony of the plush hotel where he is staying near the Champs Elysees.
On Wednesday, he appeared unfazed as he emerged, immaculately turned out, to talk to media, although he did seem slightly uneasy at times, not least when one member of the audience started chanting his name.
Unlike when Zlatan Ibrahimovic signed for PSG in 2012 there was no glitzy unveiling in front of the Eiffel Tower, but Messi was photographed on the pitch before greeting the supporters who had waited at the stadium entrance, watching his press conference on a big screen.
“I had to come here with my young children,” said one supporter, called Wesley. “They don’t know about everything Messi has done in his career but I hope they will remember this for a long time because Messi coming to PSG is crazy stuff.” “I’m very proud to present Leo Messi as a PSG player,” said Nasser al-Khelaifi, the president of the Qatar-owned outfit, earlier. “It is an amazing and historic day for the club, for the football world.” Messi made no secret of his sadness at leaving Barca, the only club he has so far represented in his 17-year professional career, as he gave a tearful news conference at the Camp Nou last weekend.
‘Can’t wait to start’
However on Wednesday he said he was looking forward to getting started in his new home.
“Everyone knows that my departure from Barca was very hard because I spent so many years there, but as soon as I arrived here I felt enormously happy,” said the player who scored 672 goals in 778 games for the Catalans.
“Now I can’t wait to start training.” Messi has had no pre-season having been on holiday since winning the Copa America with Argentina a month ago.
He is therefore unlikely to make his debut for PSG soon, and certainly not this weekend when Mauricio Pochettino’s team play Strasbourg in Ligue 1.
PSG are now even more obvious favourites to run away with the French title, having missed out last season to Lille.
However, despite concerns about a lack of competitive balance, French League president Vincent Labrune hailed the arrival of the six-time Ballon d’Or winner as “extraordinary news for the exposure of Ligue 1 internationally”.
“The arrival of Lionel Messi will increase the attractiveness and visibility of our league on all continents,” he said.
Attention, though, will turn to the future of 22-year-old Mbappe, who has just a year left on his contract and has been strongly linked to Real Madrid.
“He said he wanted a competitive team,” Al-Khelaifi said.
“Now there’s no-one more competitive than us. He has no reason to do anything else.”
World reacts to Messi’s stunning French switch
Argentina forward Lionel Messi, who left Barcelona after 21 years last week, has signed a two-year contract with Paris Saint-Germain, with the option of an additional year, the French club announced on Tuesday.
Messi, 34, will wear the number 30, the number he had when he began his professional career at Barca.
“I am excited to begin a new chapter of my career at Paris Saint-Germain,” he said in a statement on the club’s website.
“Everything about the club matches my football ambitions,” Messi, who was given a hero’s welcome by the PSG fans when he arrived in the French capital on Tuesday, added.
“I know how talented the squad and the coaching staff are here.
“I am determined to help build something special for the club and the fans, and I am looking forward to stepping out onto the pitch at the Parc des Princes.”
Messi, who was a free agent after his shock departure from boyhood club Barcelona last week, landed at Le Bourget airport to the north of Paris on Tuesday afternoon.
🛫 ð—£ð—”ð—¥ð—œð—¦ 🛬
— Paris Saint-Germain (@PSG_English) August 10, 2021
â¤ï¸ #PSGxMESSI 💙 pic.twitter.com/GQgEtBTGXc
There he was greeted by hundreds of PSG supporters who had gathered hoping to catch a glimpse of their new signing.
Those fans also gathered outside the club’s Parc des Princes home and near a plush hotel in the city where Messi along with wife Antonella and their three children are expected to be staying.
Messi waved to crowds while sporting a Paris T-shirt on his arrival at the airport before being taken for his medical.
Messi’s father Jorge, who is also his agent, had earlier confirmed the inevitable as he arrived at Barcelona’s El Prat airport to board a flight to France.
Asked by reporters if his son would sign for the French club, he replied: “Yes”. The completion of his move closes a whirlwind few days following the announcement last Thursday that he would leave Barcelona, the club he has represented for the entirety of his 17-year professional career.
Paris Saint-Germain is delighted to announce the signing of Leo Messi on a two-year contract with an option of a third year.https://t.co/D5Qjq7PJfF#PSGxMESSI â¤ï¸ðŸ’™ pic.twitter.com/msJAnW01V5
— Paris Saint-Germain (@PSG_English) August 10, 2021
PSG’s move for Messi had been an open secret for days, although reports in Spain on Monday night talked of a “final offer” by Barcelona to try to keep the player.
Instead, the six-time Ballon d’Or winner will join a PSG attack already featuring Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.
Qatar-backed PSG see Messi as the missing piece in their jigsaw as they chase the Champions League, the trophy they want more than anything else.
“Back together,” Neymar, who played with Messi at Barcelona before moving to PSG in 2017, posted on Twitter.
Barcelona are still coming to terms with the departure of their greatest ever player, who said goodbye to his club of two decades at a tearful news conference on Sunday.
Despite offering to cut his salary by half to seal a new five-year contract with the Catalans, the deal foundered on Spanish league salary cap rules.
Barcelona, carrying debts of 1.2 billion euros ($1.41 billion), are unable to register new signings because of their financial predicament.
With Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City having ruled themselves out, PSG were about the only club who could afford what is expected to be a deal worth 35 million euros ($41 million) a year.
He leaves Barcelona with 672 goals in 778 appearances, a record tally for one club.
Messi won 35 trophies at the Camp Nou after joining Barca aged 13, but his last appearance was a damp squib: a 2-1 home defeat behind closed doors against Celta Vigo in May.
His trophy haul includes four Champions Leagues and 10 La Liga titles. “It will be difficult to see him in another shirt than that of Barca,” Messi’s old Barcelona teammate Andres Iniesta, now playing in Japan, told AFP in an interview on Tuesday.
“As a player he just transcended everything. I’ve not seen a player like him — and I don’t think I ever will. You look at what he did and for so long …” – PSG building – This summer PSG have already added veteran Spanish defender Sergio Ramos from Real Madrid and Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, the star of Euro 2020.
They have also signed Georginio Wijnaldum from Liverpool, snatching the Netherlands’ midfielder from under the noses of Barcelona, and spent 60 million euros on Inter Milan right-back Achraf Hakimi, who scored on his PSG league debut at the weekend.
Messi could be unveiled to supporters on Saturday, when PSG host Strasbourg and a full house of nearly 48,000 will be allowed in for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic struck 18 months ago.
However he is unlikely to make his debut until later this month at the earliest.
MESSI BY THE NUMBERS
6: the number of Ballons d’Or, football’s most prestigious individual award, won by Messi since the start of his career (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019), one more than his perennial rival, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.
35: the number of trophies Messi won in a Barcelona shirt. In detail, he has won four Champions Leagues, 10 Spanish championships, seven Copas del Rey, three European Super Cups, eight Spanish Super Cups and three Club World Cups.
50: the number of goals scored by Messi in La Liga in the 38 matches of the 2011-2012 season, a record. That season he scored a total of 73 (another record).
74.9: Messi’s net salary in millions of euros at Barcelona per season, according to Spanish daily El Mundo. In Paris, his salary would be around 40m euros, ($46.9m) according to the French press, which would put him in the same category as Neymar (36m euros), until now the highest paid player in the history of Ligue 1.
474: the number of goals scored by the ‘Pulga’ (flea) in La Liga in 520 games played with Barcelona (0.91 goals per game), the most in La Liga history ahead of Ronaldo (451).
542: the number of victories by Barca in Messi’s 778 appearances (another record)
6: the number of four-goal games for Barcelona. He also scored 41 hat-tricks and had one five-goal game.
14: the most goals scored in one season in the Champions League (2011/2012). A record that Ronaldo broke two years later when he hit 17.
21: the number of consecutive games in which Messi found the net in La Liga in the 2012/2013 season.
26: the number of goals scored against arch rivals Real Madrid. 28: the minute of his last goal in a Barca shirt, against Celta Vigo on May 16, a home loss that ended the club’s hopes of the title.
245 million: the number of followers the Argentine star has on Instagram. It is one of the biggest accounts on the social network, much more than the number who followed PSG (38.6 M) before news of Messi’s arrival boosted their social media numbers.
671: The number of goals scored for Barcelona in all competitions. That’s 28 more than Pele scored with Santos between 1956 and 1974.
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