Bartomeu Reveals €400 Million Messi Threat and Barcelona's Reaction
Josep Maria Bartomeu says a mystery club once stood ready to drop €400 million on Lionel Messi, triggering a frantic scramble inside Barcelona’s offices and reopening old wounds about how the club handled its greatest player.
The former Barça president, still a deeply divisive figure among supporters, lifted the lid on the episode in a wide-ranging interview with Spanish newspaper ABC in April 2026. His account drags everyone back to 2017, to the chaos that followed Neymar’s world-record move to Paris Saint-Germain.
A €400m warning
According to Bartomeu, the alarm bells rang shortly after Neymar walked out of Camp Nou. Barcelona, suddenly flush with cash and exposed, were warned that another club was seriously considering activating Messi’s €400 million release clause.
He did not name the club. He didn’t even hint at the league. Just the number, the timing, and the sense of danger.
Inside the boardroom, that was enough.
Bartomeu says the threat pushed Barcelona into immediate action. The hierarchy moved quickly to set up a meeting with Messi and his father, Jorge, determined not to let the club’s talisman slip away in the same summer as Neymar.
The outcome was decisive. By November 2017, Messi had signed a new deal that pushed his release clause up to €700 million, a figure designed to scare off even the richest state-backed projects and lock in the player who defined an era.
“Messi was actually paid little”
Bartomeu also used the interview to defend the eye-watering salary that contract carried, a topic that has followed him ever since Barcelona’s financial crisis burst into public view.
Critics have long pointed to Messi’s wages as a symbol of the club’s excess. Bartomeu pushed back hard. He argued that Messi generated more value than he cost, both on the pitch and across the club’s commercial empire. Shirt sales, sponsorships, global reach — in Bartomeu’s view, the numbers always tilted in Messi’s favour.
He went even further, insisting that when you weigh his sporting and commercial impact, Messi was “paid little.”
It is a claim that lands right at the heart of the modern football economy: how do you price a player who is not just a star, but the face of a club, a league, almost an entire era?
The 2021 exit blame game
The conversation inevitably turned to 2021, the year Messi finally left Barcelona. On that subject, Bartomeu refused to accept responsibility.
He pointed the finger at the current board, suggesting the decision and the circumstances around Messi’s departure lie with those who succeeded him. It is not the first time he has made that argument; he has repeated similar lines in other interviews, clearly intent on reshaping how his presidency is remembered.
For many fans, those efforts ring hollow. For others, they raise uncomfortable questions about how the club was run before and after he stepped down. The split is sharp, and it shows no sign of healing.
What Bartomeu’s latest revelations do make clear is this: even years after Messi walked away, Barcelona still cannot escape the gravitational pull of his story. One warning about a €400 million clause, one contract, one exit — and the debate refuses to die.
