Barcelona all-time leading goal scorer says he will stay in Barcelona and continue being part of the club despite wanting to go ‘’all the years’’, the six times Ballon d’Or winner announced his statement in an exclusive interview with Goal.com on Friday. His decision comes weeks after he sent a letter to the group informing about his resignation; ‘’I’ll continue at Barcelona and my attitude won’t change, no matter how much I wanted to go’’ Messi told the Goal.com. He further stated referring to Josep Maria Bartomeu ‘’I told the club, the president, that I wanted to go, I’ve been telling him all years’’.  Messi’s stinging attack on Bartomeu and club specifies that his future still remain in doubt.

In July2017, Barcelona and Messi announced a contract extension that would keep him with the team till June 30 2021 which is reportedly worth $645000 a week. Messi and his father turned agent Jorgi Messi believed that a clause in his contract could allow him to leave at the end of the last season but Barca stated the option expired on June 10. In the same interview Lionel stated that ‘’The president always said that that at the end of the season I could decide if I wanted to go or if I wanted to stay and in the end he didn’t end up keeping his words. And this is why I am going to continue in the club because the president told me that the only way to leave was to pay 700 million euro release clause’’.

The Argentinean who joined the club as a boy has been with it since year 2000 and helped it win ten league titles and four Champion League trophies; he requested to leave the club following Barcelona’s humiliating 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich in his last game ‘It was a very difficult year, I suffered a lot in training, in games and in dressing rooms’. His lawyer sent Barca a fax on August 25 stating his intention to depart but Messi said he made his feelings clear to Bartomeu long before he stated in the interview that ‘’I told the club, especially the president that I wanted to go, I believed the club needed more young people, it wasn’t because of Champions Leagues results against Bayern, I had been thinking about it for a long time’’.

With his decision to stay and play the field, Barcelona responded to Messi’s pledge by posting a picture of striker on Twitter in the clubs new kit, with caption ‘’I’m going to give my best, my love for Barca will never change’’.         

️ Leo #Messi: I will give it my all. My love for Bara will never change. pic.twitter.com/xBh29dTqpr

— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) September 4, 2020