Lionel Messi believes that LaLiga sides Barcelona and Real Madrid remain the two biggest clubs in world football, despite a number of other teams now making giant strides in trying to close the gap.
Messi, who earns an estimated £365,000 a week at Barcelona, claims the big spending of the oil-rich clubs is ruining the game, taking a swipe at the likes of Manchester City and P.S.G. who are backed by billionaire owners in U.A.E and Qatar respectively.
“There are clubs now with a lot of money and players move for that reason,” he told Catalunya radio.”
Last season, Neymar Jr. decided to leave Barcelona and join P.S.G. in a deal reportedly worth over £200 million. Messi alluded to the trend of players choosing to move to clubs that are financially powerful, to the extent of them settling for inferior leagues that don’t have the same level of competition as the other big leagues in Europe.
“Wherever the most money is, that’s where they end up going.”
Messi also feels that the influx of cash into the world of football has resulted in some of the sides with lesser European pedigree now being serious challengers for the biggest prize in Europe.
“Things have changed and now the owners of clubs are multi-millionaires. Before, everyone wanted to play for Barca or Madrid, who were the best, but now everything’s tighter and there’s not much of a difference between the teams in Manchester, PSG, Madrid, us, Bayern [Munich], the Italians.”
Barcelona have been drawn in a tricky group in this season of the Champions League along with the likes of Inter Milan, Tottenham Hotspur and PSV Eindhoven. Both Inter and Tottenham have steadily gained reputations of being worthy of the biggest stage in world football and it will be interesting to see how Leo Messi and Co. manage to navigate a way through the group stages before trying to overcome the quarter-final stage, which has proved to be their downfall in the last three seasons.