The Tokyo Olympics and the move by Messi from FC Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain provide examples to be followed and cautionary tales, writes Jimmy Burns.
Even for those of who have managed only a cursory armchair TV look-in during the Tokyo Olympics between navigating our August break through competing and disruptive terrain of Test cricket, the Lions tour of South Africa , and Covid protocols, the event has served as a reminder of the sheer joy of sport played in its essence along with much else.
Mostly very young athletes from every nation in the world -whether skate boarders or long-distance runners, swimmers or bike riders, divers or high jumpers, drawing on their talent and hard worked training, with moments of sheer focus and human endeavour and self-discipline, in body, mind and soul, the difference between winning a medal or not.
In these Olympic Games held, against in the odds, in the Time of Covid despite and maybe because of empty stadiums, humanity has prevailed with athletes publicly owning up to mental health problems and showing compassion for each other.
And how can one not be among the more than a million social media fans that followed that genial icon of diversity Tom Daley, showing off his knitting and crocheting skills as well as his impeccably balletic springboard gold medal turn and fraternal celebration.
Another personal favourite of mine was the one-minute Zen slot in the BBC’S daily coverage, showing the most sublime individual performance at its most perfect, drawing the viewer to be present in the moment, with clarity and wisdom, in deference to the host country Japan’s Buddhist culture.
Such moments spoke of the Olympian spirit, at its purest, satisfying our need for compassion, peace and harmony in our dislocated and binary world.
Which brings me to Messi who has has generated more media coverage and social media following with his story than any single Olympic event.
Hard not to shed a tear along with Messi in his farewell press conference as he shared his emotions, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, as he bid farewell to a club that has been part of his extended family as well as his home since he moved to Barcelona at the age of thirteen, and where he earned a reputation as the best and most successful football player of the modern era winning 34 major trophies in 21 years.
The memory endures of Messi enchanting a global audience over many seasons with the Barca colours, showing his creative genius on and off the ball, leading by example, and doing wonders with his feet, sheer poetry in motion.
And yet the final chapter of Messi’s history as a player at Barcelona was destined to be not an uplifting tale but a telling one about what happens when football ceases to be a game to be enjoyed .
The story, as it has unravelled, has served as a reminder of the extent that politics and egos are rampant in Spanish football, the huge sums that Messi, and other players earn, and the appalling financial mismanagement that has contributed to FC Barcelona’s enormous debt. It has turned a once respected sporting organisation, which claimed not a just strong sense of cultural identity but the title of the most successful club in the world, into a failed enterprise struggling to keep afloat.
As for Messi, it’s good to see him, at his first press conference with PSG, smiling again and promising may more days of football glory. Now he has wiped his tears, he can look forward to a future, at least for the two seasons he has signed up, with a club that can afford to pay him a reported €35m net per season.
Messi will now play for Paris San-Germain, a club owned by Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani, ruler of Qatar through a subsidiary of the state-run shareholding organisation Qatar Sports Investments and whose president and CEO Nasser al-Khelaifi is chairman of beIN Sports, a television channel backed by Qatar which has FIFA broadcasting rights for next November’s World Cup finals which the emirate is hosting.
This will have Messi playing in the French League which is politically less charged than the Spanish La Liga and less competitive than the English Premier League. He will also have more time to prepare for the World Cup, with whatever sponsorship and additional fees might be linked to his new contractual arrangements, as a key ambassador for the World Cup titles finals in the host Arab state. Messi will be hoping to add to his tally of four Champion’s League Barca titles with PSG that has never won it but now making up a potential formidable trio, Mbappe, and Neymar, and with the Argentine team chasing the one cup that has always eluded him, in Qatar next year.
Messi will no doubt continue to bring joy to football fans around the world for a while yet. However, in leaving Barca, he has left an institution that boasted once that it was, according to its legendary motto ‘more than a club’ aspiring to loyalty and solidarity as well as excellence. FC Barcelona is now in a terrible crisis of self-belief, the collective dream of the global fan base of the club being not just the best, but playing with a genius at its heart, shattered.
