things have to even out eventually. was the best deal ever that we got for free basically, even when considering the wages, commissions and everything we paid him while here.
even if we paid 1.5B for him(which surely is not true), if you spread it over 20 years then it would mean we paid 75M a season to have him. i think it is something like 50M a season though. guaranteed that any club in the world would take that deal right now.
it's not like he wasn't best in the world in 2019. and contract was signed in 2017. he was in his prime back then. also, market evolved with time. neymar move and all clubs getting much more money than when messi was 24.
What a piece of mental gymnastics and sophism!
You can't divide the whole sum of his wages over his whole career the way you want to.
If Barto was not a stupid imbecile, and had never offered him that ridiculous
and insulting to the club and its history contract Messi eventually signed, then 'the investment' in him would have been just fine.
Whatever he offered in his last contract did more harm than good to the club.
The Valverde leagues hid the fact that the team was done at top level, rotten to the core and needed a rebuild.
(Not that I think he would have left then. He would have compromised to a much lower contract, because he wanted to never leave the club)
The best thing is that in 20 years we never saw Messi (when he wasn't playing) in any private box or VIP section, he was always sitting next to the bench.
