Lionel Messi should not have to show up for a Barcelona tribute dictated by a board he fell out with. Joan Gaspart, who went on the Catalan podcast "Solo para culés" this week to lecture him about it, has aimed his fire at the one person in this saga who hasn't done anything wrong.
Gaspart said plenty. The president who ran the club from 2000 to 2003, and who signed Messi as a 13-year-old, called him "an undeniable footballer, the best in the world, and a great player," then added the part everyone's quoting: "there is one thing he must not forget, which is that Barcelona is bigger than him." He went further. "Who does he think he is? To make coming to Barcelona conditional on whether Laporta is there or not." And he threatened to walk: if Messi only turns up once Joan Laporta is gone, Gaspart said, "I wouldn't give him a tribute."
The farewell doesn't exist yet. Messi left in the summer of 2021 with no official goodbye in front of the fans, blamed at the time on the club's finances and COVID restrictions. In the years since, what's stopped a proper send-off is the frosty relationship between Messi and Laporta. Laporta has talked about tying a tribute to the reopened Camp Nou. As of this week, Barcelona have announced no date. Messi's contract with Inter Miami runs to the end of 2028, so nobody is under any clock here.
Gaspart is demanding something specific. He wants Messi to stop "delaying" a ceremony that Barcelona themselves have never scheduled. He wants the player to turn up and smile for a photo op arranged by the same leadership he feels wronged him. It's a hostage negotiation with the fans as the ransom.
The push for a send-off comes from the people in the stands who never got to say goodbye. Messi has never pushed for one himself. He has never aimed anything at the club itself. His problem is with a president. In November 2025 he turned up at Camp Nou at midnight, unannounced, with nobody at the club even knowing he was there, and posted about "a place I have missed with all my soul," where "a thousand times you made me feel like the happiest person in the world." It sounds like a man who loves the place and can't stand dealing with the office that runs it.
Gaspart has a real point buried in there, too. Barcelona is an elected institution, and a club genuinely is bigger than any individual who passes through it, even the greatest player it ever had. A president holds an office, and the office outlives the man. All true. But none of that obliges a private citizen to attend an event on the terms of someone he doesn't trust. Respecting the institution and refusing to be stage-managed by its current board are two completely different things, and Gaspart has blurred them on purpose.
The uncomfortable truth is that the "delay" sits on Barcelona's doorstep. They let him leave with no farewell, had years to fix it, and still haven't picked a date. Gaspart could have spent his podcast asking why his own club still hasn't managed to honor the best player in its history. Instead he went looking for the camera and found Messi.
Messi doesn't owe Barcelona a performance. Barcelona owes Messi a goodbye, and the only people stopping it from happening are the ones who work there.
