Messi Leaving Barcelona

About

Messi Leaving Barcelona refers to the fútbol superstar Lionel Messi deciding to resign from FC Barcelona on August 5th, 2021. Lionel Messi had been on the team for roughly 17 years, his Barcelona debut being October 16th, 2004.

Origin

On August 5th, 2021, FC Barcelona made the announcement via a tweet (shown below).^[1] FC Barcelona stated in its more official statement hyper-linked in the tweet, "Despite FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi having reached an agreement and the clear intention of both parties to sign a new contract today, this cannot happen because of Spanish LaLiga regulations on player registration. As a result of this situation, Messi shall not be staying on at FC Barcelona. Both parties deeply regret that the wishes of the player and the club will ultimately not be fulfilled."^[2]

Memes

On August 5th, 2021, image macros and Photoshop re-edits guessing where Messi would be going next began to blow up across the internet. For example, Arsenal fans on r/Gunners began to joke about the superstar's potential landing spot (shown below on left).^[3] The post received 1,700 upvotes in roughly 6 hours. Other sports subreddits, even ones not related to soccer, began cracking jokes about the situation. A user in NBA subreddit r/washingtonwizards re-surfaced an old photo of Messi holding a custom Wizards jersey, making a joke about it (shown below on right).^[4]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References