Just salivating at the thought of the domino effect this’ll cause for future transfers (& perhaps even current negotiations for Koulibaly). Pep was already a massive lure for many of our top-tier signings already, but then you add 2-3 years of Messi on top of that? Lord have mercy.
Should hopefully be pretty easy to temp our next Agüero replacement, because who wouldn’t want to be the striker for the club that’ll have Messi & KDB feeding them all day. Ideally it’ll be Mbappe & hope another CL-less season will him have looking for greener pastures. Though worth noting he does have the Euros next year which might make his value go up considering his & France’s form, & his contract also runs out in 2022.
Also we might be the next Inter in terms of drawing from Argentina. Already had Pablo, Otamendi (when he wasn’t useless), Agüero & now Messi. Might gain some massive popularity in Argentina for a good while & gain some interest from the next-generation of Argentine wonder-kids. Agüero & Messi scoring goals for fun on local TV? Sounds pretty fucking great.
Aside from that, we have 3 weeks until our season begins & I really hope this doesn’t drag for another 2 weeks since it’ll also hamper our Koulibaly talks. Ideally we get Koulibaly next week & get him ready to integrate into Pep’s system for a good while before the season starts.
Same obviously goes for Messi. Of course Messi & Pep have a great working relationship, but Pep has also adjusted his methods a lot since his Barca days, so Messi isn’t just going to slot into whatever position like it’s the good-old days. Plus, our opening group of fixtures will be tough as hell. Wolves (a), Lei (H), Leeds (a), Arsenal (H). Messi will quite literally be thrown to the wolves in his first couple of games, vs teams that have caused us all sort of problems last season. Thankfully no crowds though, so maybe the pressure will be greatly reduced.
Regardless, it’ll be a wholly new system for Messi & we need to give him as much time to get acquainted in the city with his family, with Pep’s system, the players, the club staff, etc. He’ll need as much of the pre-season for that to take effect & have him be comfortable as possible in his role on the field (& the players with him as well). If this ends up being a long, bitter legal battle with Barca, he’ll likely have very little time to settle in all those ways I mentioned. So while I have no doubt he’ll break all sorts of records this season, there’ll be a lot of pressure in those first couple of games to be the same-old Messi & those first four fixtures might very well shape our season imo.