I'm sad for him that it's come to this, and Barto is horrific, but the poor Messi narrative is still flawed in my view. The club will come out of this looking really bad, because the media story is of Saint Leo, but it's inaccurate. He openly backed Valverde after Roma and Liverpool. So, as much as he can complain about how the club 'doesn't have a clue' he himself was clearly blind to the fact that, long-term, Valverde-ism was running this club into the ground. All of the senior players are complicit in what's happened here, they just don't want to take any responsibility for it. Barca has become a club of buck-passing, and Leo is just as guilty of that as anyone.
The story he's painted here is that he was just a guy standing by, powerless to do anything, but you could have done something. You could have spoken out about a manager who only plays ageing seniors, with little to no chance for any youth progression in the team, and how the team was slowly declining as a result of this. Instead you just pined for Neymar, who's been sitting on a treatment table in Paris for 3 years. This statement takes no responsibility for anything, and that grates with me. You can blame the board for poor recruitment and trying to fill holes, yes, but potentially good, young recruits who could have developed into good players were also consistently sidelined (like Malcom) and La Masia products were discarded in favour of Rakitic, Vidal and Suarez starting every week. Coutinho and Griezzman were both horribly misused by the manager Leo wanted to remain at the club, despite overseeing two of our biggest ever humiliations and playing rancid football. Yes, Messi doesn't want to be the kingmaker, but at some point you have to take some responsibility and decide your own future. If things are bad, speak up - if not then you are just as much to blame as anyone else.
Also, as fans, we deserve at least some words from the captain of the club after losing 8-2 to Bayern. Radio silence is not okay, whatever the situation.