{"id":2226,"date":"2021-02-02T19:43:58","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T19:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/koeman-not-confident-messi-will-stay-at-barcelona-after-this-season\/"},"modified":"2021-02-02T19:43:58","modified_gmt":"2021-02-02T19:43:58","slug":"koeman-not-confident-messi-will-stay-at-barcelona-after-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/?p=2226","title":{"rendered":"Koeman 'not confident' Messi will stay at Barcelona after this season"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Uncertainty over Lionel Messi’s future has persisted since the Argentine failed in his attempt to engineer a move away from Barcelona last summer.<\/p>\n

And it doesn’t look like speculation will end anytime soon.<\/p>\n

Especially now that Barcelona manager Ronald Koeman acknowledged there’s no guarantee that the six-time Ballon d’Or winner will stay in the Catalan capital beyond this season.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m not confident about (Messi staying this summer),” Koeman told iconic English striker Alan Shearer, who interviewed the former Everton boss for The Athletic.<\/p>\n

“I’m hopeful, yes, about this because he’s still a great player and he’s still winning matches for us, for the team. I’m enjoying being his coach; if you look at his qualities every day in the training sessions, it’s incredible. Of course, he came as a young kid to Barcelona. And I still don’t see Leo Messi in another shirt other than the Barca shirt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messi sent shockwaves through the football world in August when it emerged that he wanted to leave the Camp Nou. He ultimately decided to stay in order to avoid a legal battle with the club after former president Josep Maria Bartomeu rejected his request.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old – who is on pace to record career-low statistics even though he has 16 goals and six assists in all competitions – admitted that the transfer saga affected his play at the beginning of the season. But Koeman was full of praise for Messi’s professionalism on and off the pitch.<\/p>\n

Tullio Puglia – UEFA \/ UEFA \/ Getty<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“I don’t have any problems with Leo,” Koeman said. “He is the captain of the team. I speak to Leo about tactical things and we have a really good professional relationship that I have with all the players. But he is \u2026 OK, he’s the captain, so you always have more communication with him.”<\/p>\n

Rather than speculation about his star player, Koeman said the biggest challenge he’s faced this season is the lack of a club president since Bartomeu resigned in October.<\/p>\n

“We need a president who’s making the future of this club,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The most difficult thing for me as a manager is that there is no president, there is not a No. 1 in the club who makes the decisions. All these kinds of decisions need to be taken by the manager and that’s more difficult.<\/p>\n

“You don’t have, at the moment, somebody to communicate with about how we need to continue. That’s difficult. The club needs a president as soon as possible.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Uncertainty over Lionel Messi’s future has persisted since the Argentine failed in his attempt to engineer a move away from Barcelona last summer. And it doesn’t look like speculation will end anytime soon. Especially now that Barcelona manager Ronald Koeman acknowledged there’s no guarantee that the six-time Ballon d’Or winner will stay in the Catalan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-champions-league"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/footballvoyage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}