Is it romantic nonsense to expect Lionel Messi to choose meaning over money?

The Italian De Rossi wanted to revel first hand in a club and stadium he had marvelled at from afar; the pandemonium of a big game, the footsteps of Diego Maradona, a raucous sporting culture. At 36, his contribution on the field was not what he would have wanted but it was a new experience from the moment he turned up and bought 100 Boca shirts for friends and family.

“It is a warmth that we no longer have in Italy, pure and selfless passion,” De Rossi said of his time in Argentina. “La Bombonera is the most absurd and sensational stadium in the world. I feel privileged to have played there, even if it didn’t last long.”

I was thinking about his move, his boldness to be different and perhaps a little idealistic, as I read that Lionel Messi may accept an absurd pounds 500 million-plus to finish his career in Saudi Arabia. Does your heart not sink?

This is about more than the rights and wrongs of whether to accept Saudi riches; that moral maze through which we chase LIV golfers, prize fighters and Fifa autocrats. In that respect, we should probably all be a little more honest about our own double standards, conflicts and oil dependency as we jump on our high horse.

A friend of mine has a job promoting sport in Saudi Arabia. He was looking for a job, he found a job and, heaven knows, he’s not miserable now even if work does require him to go frequently to Riyadh, perhaps the world’s dullest capital city.

He has done the right thing for himself and his family. Good luck to him – which is exactly what we very rarely say when it comes to elite athletes hoovering up Middle Eastern riches.

We hope for better from them, which may be about the morals of serving a regime, with all its deplorable traits, in such a high-profile role – but may also be about De Rossi’s example and the hope that more top performers will harbour a little romance in their veins.

It is a hope that, when a journalist close to Messi said in December that the maestro carried an ambition to one day pull on the shirt of Newell’s Old Boys, where he began as a precocious child until lured to Barcelona at 13, he would follow through on that uplifting return to Rosario and the nation where he has never played professionally for a club.

A hope that when Messi pulled on the red-and-black jersey of Newell’s in homage to Maradona after the legend’s death in 2020, it was more than a gesture. After all, hadn’t Maradona left Europe to return to Argentina, and to Newell’s and on to Boca, to finish his career in front of his own people?

A different era? Romantic nonsense, especially when there is such crazy money on offer? Perhaps, but as fans we like to imagine that the stars play for more than the pay packet and Messi can certainly afford to. We imagine that, even after all the lessons to the contrary, it is love for the game that connects us to the best player in the world.

It is why I could not help looking at the options for Messi – and Inter Miami in the MLS would at least offer a more serious level of football than the Saudi Pro League for a player still capable, at 35, of playing anywhere – and wondering if it truly was automatic that he would disappear under a mountain of cash like Cristiano Ronaldo at Al Nassr on a reported salary of pounds 177 million a year.

Perhaps Messi wants to trump Ronaldo one last time. Maybe, having lifted the World Cup in his country’s jersey in December, he believes he has already done more than enough for Argentina. Maybe finding out that Barcelona could no longer afford his wages, and that Paris Saint-Germain are not what was promised in the brochure, has made him a little cynical.

Would we turn down the money? Daily reality says probably not; sport makes us hope that we would. We hope that athletes can be the best of us, which is why we put them on pedestals, call them heroes, legends, and stick posters on the wall. We hope it is about passion and glory for them as much as us.

It is why so many of us have been so depressed by the golfers Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia, who, in the past week, parted company with the DP World Tour and destroyed any chance of appearing in future Ryder Cups as player or captain.

That trio have played in 28 Ryder Cups. Westwood represented Europe a record 11 times; Garcia is the team’s record points scorer; Poulter has been the fist-pumping heartbeat of the side, the chief miracle-worker in Medinah in 2012.

Perhaps it is absurd to hope that one week every two years matters enough to turn down silly money. But we invest ourselves so deeply, emotionally in the game, and hope that they do too.

I know, I know. You may say I’m a dreamer. And there is, of course, plenty of evidence to the contrary in sport; and plenty more to follow now that Saudi Arabia is expanding its football operation, targeting European stars, as we reported on Wednesday with the opportunity for Hugo Lloris to leave Tottenham Hotspur for stupid money.

There are far more examples of the reverse-De Rossi, such as Oscar, who left Chelsea in January 2017, aged 25, at his peak. The skilful attacker had 51 caps for Brazil, had scored in a World Cup semi-final (a shame Germany had already scored seven) and had everything to play for. And then he decided that he would settle for Shanghai Port, and winning the Chinese Super League (once in 2018) in return for three times the salary that he was earning in west London.

He would allow his talent to wither. He would settle for international exile. He would even make sad, futile inquiries about switching allegiance to China.

I suppose I should say good luck to him – and to Messi, whatever he decides. His life, after all. But, as sports fans, it is not easy to set aside our hopes, passions and belief that the game should mean more than this.

-The Times

Originally published as Is it romantic nonsense to expect Lionel Messi to choose meaning over money?