Messi’s return to Barça: Javier Tebas sets the record straight.

The president of La Liga, Javier Tebas, sought to clarify the circumstances surrounding a possible return of Lionel Messi to FC Barcelona in 2023. Invited to the sports show Estudio Estadio on the public broadcaster RTVE, the Spanish official revisited the statements of former Barça coach Xavi Hernández. The latter had recently claimed that the Catalan club’s president, Joan Laporta, was not in favor of the Argentine star’s return to Camp Nou.

Xavi had also suggested that the Spanish league had not blocked a possible move to bring Messi back after his FIFA World Cup 2022 triumph. A version that Tebas, however, tempered. The Spanish official insists that the body he leads never gave its approval for such a move. La Liga did not authorize anything regarding Leo Messi’s return to Barcelona in 2023, he said, thus putting an end to speculation about an institutional endorsement of the matter.

As a reminder, Messi left FC Barcelona in August 2021, after negotiations for a contract extension broke down in a financially difficult context for the Catalan club. The Argentine forward had then joined Paris Saint-Germain as a free agent, before continuing his career in Major League Soccer with Inter Miami CF.