'No club will risk €700m on Messi', says ex-Barca director Freixa

Former Barcelona director Toni Freixa reckons no club will risk spending €700m to release Lionel Messi from his contract.

Messi wants out after growing disillusioned with Barcelona amid several on-and-off the pitch events, despite the club’s best attempts to keep him.

Things in Catalonia reached a new all-time low when the Argentine handed in a formal transfer request last month. He hoped to exploit a clause in his contract that would make it void this summer. However, Barcelona and LaLiga have both believe the option expired on June 10.

It leaves Messi with two options in either hoping a club pays for his €700m buyout clause or waits until his contract expires next year.

But the 33-year-old’s father and agent, Jorge, countered these claims on Friday by insisting the big-money release clause on his son’s contract ‘is not applicable at all’.

Lionel Messi's father has hit back at La Liga, arguing Messi's €700M release clause no longer applies pic.twitter.com/Bnyo2TNjAd

— B/R Football (@brfootball) September 4, 2020

However, Freixa insists the law is on Barcelona’s side regarding Messi’s contract.

The former club director, who hopes to displace Josep Maria Bartomeu as president in the upcoming elections in March 2021, told Radio Catalunya: “I was able to view the document and I saw that it didn’t have sufficient basis.

“The client is always right in these cases, and I expect that Messi’s advisers told him they would support him whether he sent it, or whether he didn’t.

“Messi can demand a transfer out of the club.

“But a judge could rule that his new club must pay his 700 million euro release clause or a similarly high penalty fee. And surely no club will run that risk.”