Wasting away his final years? Dude he's completed football. Won the World Cup at 35, multiple Copa's overseeing one of the most successful periods in Argentina's history. What more does he need to do lol
As for Barca, they blew nearly a billion on some horrible transfers. They were spending more money than City while he was there. Not to mention all the massive long term contracts of their senatori like Pique, Alba, Busquets and the likes.
The difference between Madrid and Barca is Madrid refreshed their squad with young talents they scouted and poached early like Vinicius, Valverde, Camavinga and a very smart free transfers like Rudiger and Alaba while Barca went for hollywood style transfers.
Saying Messi crippled the club financially is a very lazy and convenient narrative. Another one of your 'hot takes' I guess.
There's something called having a competent management which Barca have been missing for almost a decade now.
I said "wasting the rest of Messi's club career," which is what he did post-Barcelona. His PSG tenure was a massive failure that no one cares about and now he's in the MLS.
And yeah, you got the "incompetent management" part right. Why do you think all of Messi's buddies got paid? Why did Barcelona sign all those expensive players in the transfer market?
it's like Lebron in the NBA, when he and his cronies run the show and make all the decisions behind the scenes, or threaten to leave because of his short term contracts.
When you give a player all that power to do what he demands, that is what happens. But they had no choice. If they didnt give in to all of his demands and he'd leave (and let his PR team throw the club under the bus on the way out), they would have revolted.
Luckily for Barcelona, the league did the dirty work for them. Otherwise, they might've be like Bordeaux.
If you dont think Messi is responsible for their situation right now, and didnt milk that club for every cent he could get, you're clueless. That doesnt happen at Real Madrid because they let no player be bigger than the club.