Barcelona’s captain Lionel Messi has said that he did wanted to leave the club back in 2013. The five-time Ballon d’Or winner revealed this a few days ago. The reason why he wanted to leave was because he was found guilty of defrauding tax authorities. Messi once said he felt he was “badly treated” by Spain when he was getting investigated back in 2013. Later, he was found guilty with his father Jorge of defrauding the Spanish government of £4.2 million between 2008 and 2009.
After being found guilty, he was handed a prison sentence of 21 months and ordered to pay a fine of £2m. He never went to prison due to him being able to pay £250,000 fine and was able to miss the prison sentence. “Sincerely, at that time, I thought about leaving,” Messi said to Barcelona-based radio station RAC1 when he was getting interviewed on Wednesday. “Not because of Barcelona but because I wanted to leave Spain, I felt very badly treated and I didn’t want to stay here any longer. I had my doors open to many clubs, but I never got an official offer because everyone knew I really wanted to stay. This situation went way beyond my feelings for Barca.” Messi continued to say.
If Messi did end up leaving very soon, we wouldn’t have seen the Ronaldo vs Messi saga throughout the years. We wouldn’t have seen anything in La Liga at all and Messi may of not been able to win the Ballon d’Or so many times. He could have been in the Premier League or even Series A. This could have been a different past few years for Barcelona, they may of not won the league as many times as they did, however Messi didn’t end up leaving the club at all and ended up staying at the club!
