THIS IS A NEGOTIATION!
Fucks sake - I know we have a lot of kids on here at the moment, but have none of you ever been involved in a negotiation before?
Look at the facts - Messi has informed Barca he wants to exercise the clause in his contract which he believes allows him to leave for free at the end of what has been an extended season, and has accordingly stopped attending training or engaging with his responsibilities at the club. This is a fact.
Bartomeu has engaged La Liga to support his position that the clause has expired, and the only way he can leave is via a club paying his release clause. This is also a fact.
His contract expires in June 2021, at which point he can leave for nothing. Again - a fact.
Jorge Messi and Bartomeu met yesterday to understand eachother's postions face to face. A final fact.
Barca are in the midst of a financial crisis, and hold the registration of an asset which could realise anything up to 700 million Euro. They are hardly going to give that option up for nothing in their current situation.
Messi wants to leave, and ideally for nothing so he can recoup as much money for himself as possible as a signing-on fee from his new club. The less his new club has to pay Barca, the more he gets for himself.
These are the two positions, which I'm sure will have been reiterated by the two parties at their meeting yesterday. As with any negotiation, a compromise needs to be reached.
In this scenario, what do Messi's people do?
Their leverage is the value of their client to Barca - so they dangle the threat of that value reducing to nothing, as it will do in June 2021 as it currently stands, to force a compromise.
In that, they have to say to Bartomeu - fine, we'll stay til June. No worries. But we refuse to sign any form of extention - so that's all you've got. Bartomeu needs the extension, otherwise he loses his most valuable asset for nothing in the run up to a presidential election in which he's trying to ensure his people win another term. Messi's team will understand the politics at Barca more than most, so they know the value of their position.
Providing Messi doesn't extend - and there is nothing in the current situation to indicate this is a possibility - he holds all the power.
But in this scenario, what does his dad need to say? Think about it. He needs to say - we understand Barca's position, so we will stay til June. No problem. This is called bluffing. So when a reporter approaches him and asks - is there a possibility of Messi staying another year, he needs to say - yes, of course there is.
This is a multi-million Euro negotiation, not a fucking argument between 5 year olds in a school playground, where no compromise is either desired or needed. It won't be over in a day, off the back of a one hour meeting - and it will have plenty of twists and turns, with false positions being briefed dependent on where the negotiations have got to that day.
Those of you taking every twitter update as gospel, and having a childish tantrum about it, need to look at the big picture of one of the biggest transfers in recent history. These deals are high stakes, and very complicated. They are not settled like some argument down the pub over whose round it is.
