Paris Saint Germain sporting director Leonardo has confirmed that the French club is interested in the signing of Barcelona’s talisman Lionel Messi in the summer of 2021.
The 33-year-old 6 times Ballon d’Or winner has been linked with several top clubs across Europe especially Manchester City and PSG since he requested that he wanted to leave Barcelona last summer.
After a series of back and forth, Lionel Messi failed to actualize his dream of joining another club for the first time in his professional football career. Hence, he had to stay back at the Spanish club to see out his contract which will expire on June 30, 2021.
If Lionel Messi fails to renew his contract with FC Barcelona until the end of June, the Argentina international will be allowed to join another club as a free agent and one of those clubs waiting on the sideline is PSG.
Leonardo who has been battling to keep PSG’s star players like Kylian Mbappe and Neymar at the club has stressed that PSG’s seat is at the table of clubs monitoring the contract situation of Messi at Barcelona.
Lionel Messi – Switching Plays. 🎩pic.twitter.com/llw2FbfvqV
— Altin (@tiniademaj10) January 11, 2021
“Great players like Messi will always be on PSG’s wish list,” he said. “But of course it’s not the moment to talk about or dream of that. But we’re at the big table of those who are following this issue closely.
“We’re not sat at this table but our chair is reserved there. Four months in football is an eternity, especially in these times.”
On the contract extension talks going on separately between PSG, Mbappe, and Neymar, Leonardo said PSG is not begging them to stay but the club is having a good feeling that the two stars would stay at the club.
“I hope they are convinced PSG is a good place to play for an ambitious player of a high level,” said Leonardo.
“We only have to find a deal between their wishes and demands, our expectations and means. We don’t have to beg them to stay. There are more arguments than that. Those who want to stay will stay. We speak regularly and have good feelings about these two topics.”
Initially, Neymar wanted to reunite with Lionel Messi at Barcelona but he recently said he was happy at PSG which could mean that he is ready to extend his contract with PSG beyond June 2022.
Besides, it might be difficult for a club to pay the sum of €128 million for the 28-year-old left-winger especially now that most clubs are still trying to recover financially from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
On the other hand, Mbappe is being chased by Real Madrid which means that if the 22-year-old French striker is not able to extend his contract with PSG before the end of the 2021 summer transfer window, he might be heading to Madrid.
His current contract with PSG will expire in June 2022 and the French Ligue 1 champions would not want to sell him even if a club can pay up his €180 million transfer market value.
