As talk of Lionel Messi ending his career at boyhood club Newell’s Old Boys continues to grow, Barcelona are hoping to ensure the Argentine sees out the rest of his playing days in Catalunya.
However, the Spanish side has frozen its plan to offer the Ballon d’Or holder a new contract due to how expensive it will be to keep him.
The club is hoping to put an end to any notion of Messi finishing his career anywhere other then Camp Nou and so is determined to ensure it has the best possible environment to keep its star man devoted and happy at the club.
Maintaining the happiness of the world’s best player and to ensuring the team remains suitably competitive at the highest level requires money, though, and lots of it.
First, Barca wants to ensure it renews the contracts of the most important players around the 29-year-old. Neymar, Sergio Busquets and Javier Mascherano are the latest crucial first-team members to have committed their futures to the Blaugrana. Luis Suarez, Ivan Rakitic, Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Andres Iniesta are the stars the club want to tie up next.
The Catalan side sees the renewals as a pivotal phase of the process as it looks to ensure Messi is surrounded by a team that can compete for domestic and continental titles every year until he calls time on his career.
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Raising the budget is a necessity, however. Barcelona ended the last financial year with record revenues of 593 million pounds ($742M). The club spent around £380 million on wages – 64 percent of its total budget – and the extra income saw it increase the wage budget by £35 million.
The renewals of Neymar, Mascherano and Busquets have set Barcelona back a great deal and the pending extensions with the other star players will only increase the costs. Messi will be the last to sign a new contract.
Messi’s current contract is unsurprisingly incredibly expensive. Officially, he makes £28 million per season across his current contract, although he's not being paid an equal amount over his current contract due to the club's debts.
Barcelona paid him £19 million in both 2014-15 and 2015-16, but this season and 2017-18 will see him earn a bumper £36 million.
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The club understands it must raise revenues to around the £900 million ($1.1 billion) mark by 2021 in order to hold onto their devastating MSN attacking trio, and so must raise its budget by a huge margin before it will be ready to move on to talks with Messi.
Messi, a winner of eight La Liga titles, four Champions League crowns and three Club World Cups with Barca, is contracted to the club until 2018, by which time he will be 31. However, the hierarchy at Camp Nou is determined to ensure he ends his career as a one-club player. The Argentine has been in Catalunya since 2001 and it’s a partnership that Luis Enrique and his side ensure continues for the foreseeable future.