April Fools Day: Messi not leaving Barcelona

Soccer Football - The Ballon d’Or awards - Theatre du Chatelet, Paris, France - December 2, 2019 Barcelona's Lionel Messi with the Ballon d'Or award REUTERS/Christian Hartmann

Lionel Messi, the Argentine football maestro who plies his trade with Barcelona, is not leaving Spanish LaLiga for English Premier League side Liverpool.

A story that we ran yesterday detailing the same was an April 1, Fools’ Day, prank.

The correct stand is that there are no recorded negotiations between Messi and Liverpool. However, football fans would salivate to see Messi leave the Camp Nou for another challenge.

Messi ,32, has been playing for Barcelona since he was 13. He has won a club-record 34 trophies, including ten LaLiga titles, four Uefa Champions League titles and six Copa del Rey trophies.

The diminutive superstar, who voted for Sadio Mane for first place in Fifa ‘The Best’ Men’s Player award, is widely expected to retire at Barcelona, with boyhood club Newell’s Old Boys possibly snapping him up when he leaves Europe.

Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi’s archrival, has been to four different leagues in his equally decorated career, remarkably setting up direct competition with Messi in the 2009 to 2018 stint the Portuguese played for Real Madrid.

The two have dominated the Ballon D’Or, winning every edition of the coveted individual trophy since 2008, with Croatia’s Luka Modric snapping the duo’s stranglehold of the award in 2018. A year later, though, Messi reclaimed the trophy to go to six, one ahead of Ronaldo.

But unlike Ronaldo, Messi is not planning to grace the English Premier League, and Fools’ Day has to be blamed for any excitement generated from yesterday’s article.