Spanish football broadcaster Semra Hunter thinks Barcelona have too many other financial problems that need figuring out before considering bringing Lionel Messi back to the club.
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South Africans can catch Hunter most evenings on SuperSport's LaLiga channel as she hosts the Spanish top flight's flagship show Viva LaLiga, in which she, alongside esteemed panellists such as Chappi Ferrer and Gary Lineker, dissects all the weekly action happening in one of Europe's premier divisions.
This week she sat down with Soccer Laduma to share her thoughts on why she thinks it is highly unlikely the diminutive Argentine will make a return to the Camp Nou.
Afternoon, Semra! What are your thoughts on Lionel Messi potentially returning to the club where he become a footballing legend, Barcelona?
I have to be brutally honest with you, I don't see how it's possible, I really don't. Because given the financial situation at the club, and I don't think publicly they want to admit this anymore, but let's face it, they can't even register Gavi as a first-team player. How on earth do you plan on bringing Lionel Messi back? Even if it is only for €25 million (R509 million).
The thing is, they are trying to get the stadium remodelled, which is estimated to cost around €1.5 billion (R30.5 billion), they're still trying to get investors on board for that, so there's been the suggestion that they may be making this public announcement about bringing Messi back to: a) create excitement for the fans; and b) to tempt investors to get involved to help with the payment of the stadium by saying, "Hey, look, Messi is coming".
So, I struggle to see how they are going to make it happen because LaLiga is also very, very strict when it comes to the rules about how much a club can spend on wages. As of right now, LaLiga have said that Barca have to lower their salary bill by €200 million (R4 billion), how are you going to do that? You're going to have to get rid of players, they are going to have to be willing to lower their salaries, which, let's face it, a lot of them, if not any of them, are not going to be willing to do that.
Then, you have the issue of Gavi being back on a youth team contract. Which means he is free to leave in the summer if he so chooses. So, you have to now come up with incentives to make him stay or else he may be poached in the summer.
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So, they've got a lot of fires they need to put out right now and I just don't see it as of today, unless something changes in the next few months, and they magically come up with a formula to lower that €200 million wage bill and offload players.
"You would suspect that they want to bring in other players too, not just Messi. It just seems like this incredible puzzle that they have to work out and I'm just not sure how they're going to do it.
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