Tommy Martin: On a planet far, far away Messi's move was an amazing day for football

This is a summer of fire sales and belt-tightening, bargain buys and free transfers. Exceptions to the general frugality are those like PSG, Man City, and Chelsea, financed by fossil fuel billions, or Man United, financed by car tyres, noodles, and dreams

PSG's Qatari president Nasser Al-Khelaifi (L) and sporting director Leonardo Nascimento de Araujo (R) pose alongside Lionel Messi as he holds up his number 30 shirt. (Photo by Stephane De Sakutin/AFP via Getty Images)

PSG sign Lionel Messi the same week humanity was issued with a ‘Code Red’ on climate change.

Seriously, future historians, this stuff writes itself.

Need a handy image to liven up a boring chapter about how dependence on fossil fuels destroyed the human race? How about the world’s greatest footballer shaking hands with the flunky of Qatari petroleum barons while the world burns?

Honestly, your amphibian cyborg readership will thank me.

According to Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the aforementioned stooge who runs PSG on behalf of the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, signing Messi was “an amazing and historic day for the club, for the football world, and a fantastic moment for us.”

Yeah, ‘the football world’ is rejoicing, mate.

“Isn’t it great that Messi has gone to PSG?” people are saying to each other, “always liked them. Proper club.”

Yep, whether you are a Champions League rival delighted that PSG are that bit closer to the holy grail, or a Ligue 1 rival looking forward to more 9-0 tonkings, this is amazing and historic alright.

In reality, for the rest of the football world, Al-Khelaifi is like the Emperor in Star Wars proudly unveiling yet another new Death Star, declaring this an amazing and exciting day for your planet, which he is about to blow up.

Aside from scenes of jubilation in Paris, the general reaction to Messi leaving Barcelona and being sucked into the petrodollar black hole has been one of weary resignation.

Nobody is particularly sad for Barca, given the almighty hames they have made of running their affairs in recent years. The Catalan giants have behaved like a septuagenarian playboy desperately trying to keep up with his nubile young girlfriend. It was always part of the plan by the likes of PSG and Manchester City to beggar the old European elite by driving up salaries and wages (including the ruinous sums paid to Messi himself); now Barcelona are in a heap on the floor, clutching their chests, hairpiece come unstuck.

Even the loony suggestion that Messi — the greatest footballer that ever lived — should have offered his services for free would not have saved them. Not when the Nou Camp is falling down with overpaid footballers it doesn’t need, like the house of one of those crazy hoarders Channel 4 make shows about.

“Have a seat there, just push aside Philippe Coutinho and Ousmane Dembele, try not to sit on Samuel Umtiti though.”

In fact, while no one is too excited at the prospect of PSG finally winning the Champions League, delighting all in Doha from the Sheikh himself right down to the lowliest migrant worker in his makeshift hovel (so long as he’s not dead, of course), it’s hard not to be a little bit pleased for Messi.

‘Sad Messi’ has become one of the enduring images of recent Champions League seasons, Barcelona’s latest humiliating exit always illustrated by lingering close-ups of his disappointed little face, staring down at the turf like a boy who’s just dropped his ice cream. Why shouldn’t he get one last chance at happiness?

Otherwise, a sense of crushing inevitability accompanies this move, as it has done this close season as a whole. Warren Buffett’s line about the tide going out showing you who has been swimming naked is appropriate to the post-pandemic soccer landscape, where speedos are in particularly short supply.

This is a summer of fire sales and belt-tightening, bargain buys and free transfers.

Exceptions to the general frugality are those like PSG, Manchester City, and Chelsea, financed by fossil fuel billions, or Manchester United, financed by car tyres, noodles, and dreams.

It’s poignant in itself that the three big deals of this transfer window may involve Messi, Jack Grealish, and Harry Kane, three one-club-men pulled by the gravitational forces of modern football finance towards richer, trophy-laden futures.

“Daddy,” the kids will say “when I grow up I want to play for (insert state-funded propaganda tool here).”

And now that Messi is fully signed-up, it’s hard not to feel a bit sad. He will, no doubt, have to shill as an ambassador for the Qatar World Cup as part of the new deal. It’s a bit silly, of course, but for some reason, we tended to project onto Messi values that he could not himself have shared.

Some part of us wanted to believe that he was this innocent, elfin sprite, the pure spirit of football made flesh. Of course, he is just a footballer, a talent inhabiting a bland public persona, presented to us in a latticework of contracts and endorsements. But how could something that provided such joy, for so long, not be special in some way?

In the middle of the wave of Messi-related content on social media these last few days was a short video put together by Uefa, consisting entirely of Messi nutmegs, flicks, pirouettes, shimmies and feints, little moments of impossible sleight-of-foot and astounding wizardry from long-forgotten Champions League games past. This was not an account of match-winning goals or glorious trophy-winning feats, but as an impressionistic portrayal of Messi, but it was no less truthful.

To watch that video was to be transported away from the last few days of grim, transactional business, of press conferences and handshakes, to another place, one untouchable by money and power. It doesn’t really matter anymore who Messi plays for or who pays his salary. It doesn’t even matter what trophies he wins or doesn’t. He is beyond that. He has settled all arguments.

To paraphrase the motto of his old club, Messi is more than a footballer. He is all the defiance, impudence, and imagination of those moments, preserved forever now, soaring examples of the joyful possibilities of one, small human body.

All of which will, no doubt, be of great interest to the amphibian cyborg historians of the future.