Lionel Messi -Throughout the year I had been telling the president I wanted to leave.

Fc Barcelona legend Lionel Messi has announced that he will be staying at Barcelona for next season at least.

The Argentine said he has informed Bartomeu of his intention to leave all through this year.

“When I communicated my wish to leave to my wife and children, it was a brutal drama. The whole family began crying, my children did not want to leave Barcelona, nor did they want to change schools.”The Argentine said in an interview with Goal.

“I love Barcelona and I’m not going to find a better place than here anywhere. Still, I have the right to decide. I was going to look for new goals and new challenges. And tomorrow I could go back, because here in Barcelona I have everything.

“I’ll continue at Barça and my attitude will not change no matter how much I have wanted to go. I’ll do my best. (…) I don’t know what will happen now. There’s a new coach and a new idea. That’s good, but then we have to see how the team responds.

“I looked further afield and I want to compete at the highest level, win titles, compete in the Champions League. You can win or lose in it, because it is very difficult, but you have to compete.”

“Mateo is still little and he doesn’t realise what it means to go somewhere else and make your life a few years elsewhere. Thiago, he is older. He heard something on TV and found out something and asked. He cried to me and said ‘let’s not go’.

“My son, my family, they grew up here and are from here. There was nothing wrong with wanting to leave. I needed it, the club needed it and it was good for everyone. My wife, with all the pain of her soul,

“Now they cling to the fact that I did not say it before June 10, when it turns out that on June 10 we were competing for La Liga in the middle of this awful coronavirus and this disease altered all the season…”

“He [Bartomeu] told me all the time: ‘We’ll talk, not now, this and that’, but nothing. The president did not give me a clue at what he was really saying. Sending the burofax was making it official that I wanted to go and that I was free…”

“Bartomeu told me that by the end of the season, I can decide whether I want to go or whether I want to stay and in the end he didn’t keep his promise.”

Messi: “The burofax was to make it official in some way. Throughout the year I had been telling the president I wanted to leave, the time had come to seek new directions in my career (…) That I wanted to go and I was free and was not going to use the optional year”