Barcelona defender, Sergi Roberto, says the players will be delighted to have Lionel Messi back to the team.
Messi left Barcelona to join Paris Saint-Germain in 2021.
Speaking after Barcelona’s El Clasico 2-1 victory over Real Madrid on Sunday, Spanish journalist Gerard Romero asked Roberto whether Barcelona’s dressing room was ready for Messi’s return in the summer, and the Spain international said: “With open arms.
“Who is not going to be prepared for Leo’s [Messi’s] return…? In the end, we don’t want to talk too much because that is something that the coach, the president and he have to decide, but we, the players, are already waiting for him with open arms.”
“He’s having good seasons, scoring lots of goals, assisting. Now they have blamed him for the UEFA Champions League elimination, but he’s a spectacular player.
In the eyes of some supposed experts, the Argentine’s anonymity in Paris Saint Germain’s tame Champions League loss at Bayern Munich offered irrefutable evidence that he can no longer cut it at the highest level.
When he was first unveiled as a PSG player in 2021, he stated, “My dream is to win the Champions League once more and I think Paris is the best place to do so.”
He couldn’t have been more wrong on that front, though. Less than two years on, PSG are further away from winning the tournament than when he joined and his presence is a contributing factor to the club’s current malaise.
Buying into the fundamentally flawed PSG project was undoubtedly the worst decision of Messi’s career – and that’s saying something given we’re talking about a man that once took Josep Maria Bartomeu at his word.
One can obviously understand the appeal of Paris.
PSG were willing to pay him what he wanted monetarily, while they were also offering him the chance to once again line out alongside his good friend Neymar – as well as the most exciting young talent in world football, Kylian Mbappe..
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