MLS
Could Messi leave Inter Miami to go back to FC Barcelona in January 2024?
The Argentine has once again been linked with a return to Barcelona if Inter Miami don’t make the MLS playoffs.
Could Messi leave Inter Miami to go back to FC Barcelona in January 2024?
That is the question that has emerged on fire, electrified and swallowed by a swirl of black smoke. Pouring out of the depths of a place only the highest above knows where, the hypothetical monster’s materialisation into this dimension has surely sent shivers down the spine of everyone with a watchful eye on MLS.
The Argentine has once again been rumoured with a return to where he made his name: the Catalan club have been in a pit of despair since his departure, with financial ruin creaking through the girders of the now demolished Camp Nou, the home of so many of his famous goals.
But could he really go back? And so soon after joining MLS, a league that has flashes of his best version in such a short time?
Could Messi go back to Barcelona and leave Inter Miami in 2024?
The rumour - and that is all it is at this stage - is that Lionel Messi will be free to go to Barcelona on loan in January 2024 if Inter Miami do not make the playoffs. That situation is looking extremely unlikely, with the side still 5 points away with just a handful of matches to be played. They would need a points swing of gargantuan proportions as well as the ability to cast a spell that sees all the other teams between them and the playoff line pick up little to no points. Some reports in Cataluña suggest that Messi could cut his Inter Miami career short to play for his boyhood club, Newell’s Old Boys, but that rumour has been flattened with the emergence of the links to Barça.
Inter Miami owner Jorge Mas said earlier in the week that Messi’s departure from Barcelona “was not to his liking. He could not say goodbye to his club, which welcomed him as a child, and I think the circumstances were not what Lionel wanted. I gave him my commitment that I will do everything possible in the coming years to give him the opportunity to say goodbye to his fans in Barcelona... either Inter Miami go there or will we do some kind of match.”
