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Messi in danger of spoiling his own fairy tale

On his most magical nights, when the world switched channels just to watch him play, the impossible dream was that Lionel Messi would some day jog on to an English football pitch, not as a Barcelona player, but as an employee of the exciting-but-megastar-deprived Premier League.

When Lionel Messi appeared on stage during the FIFA Ballon d’Or 2014 award ceremony in Zurich on Monday, it was impossible not to notice the mistrust or alienation that came over him when he was asked to be open about his life and career. PHOTO: REUTERS

When Lionel Messi appeared on stage during the FIFA Ballon d’Or 2014 award ceremony in Zurich on Monday, it was impossible not to notice the mistrust or alienation that came over him when he was asked to be open about his life and career. PHOTO: REUTERS

On his most magical nights, when the world switched channels just to watch him play, the impossible dream was that Lionel Messi would some day jog on to an English football pitch, not as a Barcelona player, but as an employee of the exciting-but-megastar-deprived Premier League.

It was only ever a fantasy, because English football’s butterfly net was never big enough to catch the one-club wonder boy for whom Barcelona was first finishing school and then the place where he would finish his career.

For the first time though, the possibility of Messi playing in England has substance. Not much, but enough for the imagination to conjure him in a Chelsea, Manchester United or Manchester City shirt.

The new Machiavellian Messi’s big foray into Barcelona politics will probably end with him getting what he wants: The removal of Luis Enrique, allegedly, and perhaps change at presidential level.

But even if his end game is to call all the shots at a club who have fallen from their high moral perch of communal values, Messi will no longer be seen as the hallowed boy-man who skipped about the pitch, baffling defenders, drawing silly grins on the faces of spectators and lighting up the field with his playground spirit.

He may think these shifts of perception are manageable or even irrelevant as long as he keeps bamboozling defences. Over time, though, they change the emotional dynamic between player and fan, player and club.

Just as Barcelona abandoned so-called Corinthian purity to sign shirt deals with Qatar Airways — and to earn a 14-month transfer ban for breaking the rules on signing under-18s — so Messi has become the more cynical superstar of a more corporate culture.

Watching him on stage in Zurich on Monday, it was impossible not to notice the mistrust or alienation that comes over him when he is asked to be open about his life and career.

The nagging impression is of someone who has lived for too long in a clique: The defensive Argentine coterie of family and advisers, a principality within the Barcelona republic.

Camp Nou-ologists attached great significance to his willingness, at an event streamed around the world, to deviate again from the message relayed angrily to Barcelona TV after the weekend win over Atletico Madrid, when he railed against the “lie” of his father speaking to Manchester City and Chelsea.

This time, in Zurich, he said: “I always said that I would finish my career at Barcelona and then at (his home town club in Argentina) Newell’s. But I don’t know where I’ll be next year. As Cristiano said recently, football has many twists and anything can happen.”

In another interview, as Ronaldo celebrated a crushing victory in the Ballon d’Or, Messi said: “It’s just a way of speaking. People ask if I’m going to play Barca or Newell’s, to return to Newell’s one day. It was just a way of talking. I always say the same thing, I always clarified it. The truth is you get tired of having to clarify everything you say.”

But clarification is hardly avoidable when a household name tells the world: “I don’t know where I’ll be next year.” The man who says nothing was suddenly saying — or implying — quite a lot.

Looking at it through his eyes, Barcelona’s appeal against FIFA’s transfer ban was recently slapped down by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which inflicts a hiatus on a club already struggling to deal with the Madrid giants, Real and Atletico. Messi is also facing criminal charges of evading €4.2 million (S$6.6 million) in tax on earnings from sponsors.

The one-club man is venerated and much discussed of late, with Steven Gerrard’s impending departure from Liverpool and Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes stopping where they started, at Manchester United: The one big English club who could buy Messi without being sent to the Financial Fair Play doghouse.

Have a good think about the paradox of FFP, which protects the old order against arrivistes, probably killing any hope we might have of seeing Messi in the Premier League.

Buying him was always the undoable deal in a business where pretty much every deal is doable. And a reported buy-out fee of €250 million seems less outrageous when placed alongside the sums paid for Andy Carroll, Mesut Ozil or Angel di Maria.

If Manchester United paid it, they would sweat the brand so much there would be floods around Old Trafford.

Yet, this is not the same tale of boyish majesty people told before Ronaldo comprehensively broke Messi’s run of four consecutive Ballon d’Or titles. Since then, the Atomic Flea has entered a weird, fatigued or detached state halfway through a World Cup, in Brazil, and embroiled himself in politics at a level that should be above any player — even one as brilliant as him.

Anyone busting the budget to buy him would no longer be splashing out just on romance and supernatural talent. He is in danger of spoiling his own fairy tale. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

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