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Former Barcelona president Joan Gaspart has taken the unusual step of publicly criticizing the club's greatest-ever player. His central grievance is Lionel Messi's apparent unwillingness to associate with the club while Joan Laporta remains at the top, prompting the pointed question: "Who does he think he is?"
Gaspart should know better than most just how significant Messi is. The longtime club figure was president of his childhood club when Carles Rexach persuaded Messi's father, Jorge, to sign a hastily arranged contract on a paper napkin back in 2000, watching as the diminutive Argentine went on to become Barcelona's all-time leader in appearances and goals.
After more than twenty years in Catalonia, Messi was not offered a contract renewal in 2021 due, Laporta claimed, to the financial constraints facing a club still suffering from the fallout of years of poor management, further worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Messi has not returned to Camp Nou in any official capacity since. The one occasion he did set foot on the pitch he cherished above all others was under the cloak of darkness, with the blessing of a starstruck group of construction workers rather than any club representative.
This estrangement, Gaspart has suggested, stems from his strained relationship with Laporta, who was only recently re-elected as club president for another term.
"He is a great player, the best in the world, partly—I won't say what percentage—thanks to Barça," Gaspart told the podcast Sólo para Culés. "Therefore, he cannot forget that. Because of that, I'm still giving him a grace period, but a day will come when it will start to bother me if Mr. Messi puts even the slightest obstacle in the way of coming to Barça to say goodbye to the fans.
"Whoever the president may be, he must come and say goodbye to Barça. If Leo Messi only comes to say goodbye the day Laporta is no longer here, and refuses to come because Laporta is the president, I wouldn't give him a tribute. Who does he think he is? To make coming to Barcelona conditional on whether Laporta is there or not. If Laporta wasn't there [because of that condition], I wouldn't attend that tribute."
"There is only one thing he must not forget," Gaspart added. "
"I say this out of the deep historical affection I have for a player I signed when he was 13 and I was Barça president: he should tread carefully. Barça is bigger than any single individual."
What Is Lionel Messi's Beef With Joan Laporta?
There are two distinct threads to the falling out between Messi and Laporta in recent years.
The first emerged in 2021, when Messi was compelled to leave the only club he had ever played for in an emotional farewell. Laporta had only just returned to the presidency, succeeding Josep Maria Bartomeu's catastrophic reign and initially pledging to accommodate Messi within the budget. Ultimately, he could not. "It wasn't what I would have liked—but it simply couldn't be, for economic reasons," Laporta would later explain.
Messi appeared not to hold too much of a grudge, as when he departed Paris Saint-Germain two years later, a return to Barcelona had been his top priority. That blockbuster move never came to pass, and blame has been directed at both parties.
Laporta contended that Messi and his father, Jorge, "preferred to go to Miami" in 2023. "We prepared the contract and sent it to Jorge Messi," Laporta claimed during this year's presidential campaign. "It was mid-March. In May, Jorge came to my house and told me it couldn't be done and that he would be under too much pressure here."
Xavi Hernández, Messi's former teammate and Barcelona's head coach in 2023, dramatically contradicted Laporta's version of events. "The president isn't telling the truth," he claimed, insisting that "it was a done deal."
"The president started negotiating the contract with Leo's father, and we had La Liga's approval, but it was the president who threw everything out," Xavi argued. "Laporta told me, verbatim, that if Leo came back, he was going to wage war against him and that he couldn't allow it."