If there is one thing guaranteed to make it difficult to sell players, it is other clubs knowing you have to sell players
“I don’t want to create false hopes,” Joan Laporta said, but that was all they had left. Barcelona’s president had been explaining the reasons why they could no longer keep Lionel Messi, offering a portrait of bankruptcy partly created by the pursuit of hopes that were not real, the consequences of calamitous management at the club, when he was asked the question some inevitably clung to. More than once, in fact. What if?
What if there was still a way to fix this? What if there was a shot at salvation, some way back? A sale, a loophole in the laws, a new deal. Couldn’t you just push a player out? Someone, anyone, just not him. There was still time, wasn’t there? What if the league realised what they, too, were about to lose and let go a little; made an exception? If Messi produced some grand gesture? Maybe even played for free? Laporta had said Messi was sad, that he wanted to stay. So stay.