There are few more listenable figures in recent Premier League history than Sean Dyche.
His impression of Pep Guardiola, explaining to Lionel Messi what English football is all about, is everything you’d want and more.
But does Dyche’s priceless story actually reveal something important about the biggest decision of Messi’s career?
Is he, in some strange, roundabout way, to thank for the Argentinian sealing legacy with the World Cup in 2022? That’s the question we’ve been left pondering.
“I said, ‘What was that thing about Lionel Messi,'” Dyche explained, in his imitable gravelly tones, on talkSPORT.
“He (Guardiola) goes, ‘Sean, Steve, I tell you this. Lionel, he said no way can he come to Manchester City. Because I tell Lionel it rains. It rains and rains. And when it stops raining, it rains again.’
“Then he goes, ‘Lionel, on a Monday night, you have to go to Burnley, Sean’s team. And they go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.’ Brucey was crying!”
The quotes themselves are golden. But you have to listen to Dyche tell it (below), in particular his hysterical impression of Guardiola, to do it the full justice.
“I went, ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to do, Pep,'” Dyche continued.
“‘You warned him correctly.’ Me and Brucey were crying, honestly. It was genius. Pep, brilliant.”
Sean Dyche reveals what Pep Guardiola told him about signing Messi (talkSPORT)
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Lurking underneath Dyche’s banterous demeanour is a genuinely interesting story – a crossroads moment that may have come to define some of football’s most enduring images of the 2020s.
Dyche’s tale corroborates much of what we already know; that the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner was pretty close to gracing English football with his presence.
You may recall the ‘burofax’ saga, Messi’s spectacular falling out with the Barcelona board and the transfer request he submitted in 2020.
“There was a four-hour meeting between Pep and Messi at Messi’s house,” Spanish football expert Guillem Balague, who has written biographies of both Messi and Guardiola, explained to BBC Radio Manchester a few years back.
“Pep told him how he was going to use him and City had all the finances ready to take him. It was around the time when he had told Barcelona he was ready to leave although he did not want to.
“He decided to stay put because he thought things would change and when he found out they were not going to renew his contract, it was too late. City had already signed Jack Grealish and so Messi went to PSG instead.”
Barcelona held firm and kept Messi during that window. The following summer, their dire financial situation left them with no choice but to let him leave on a free.
Guardiola himself has admitted that City moved on to record signing Grealish.
“We spent £40million on Jack Grealish – we paid £100million and £60million of that was raised from transfers,” Guardiola told reporters that summer.
“He will wear the number 10. We were convinced by Grealish and convinced Leo would stay at Barca. Right now he is not in our thoughts.”
Given Messi’s enduring greatness and Grealish’s struggles, fizzling out to a flat ending at the Etihad, it’s all too easy now to conclude that City made a mistake in spending £100million on the England international rather than land the greatest footballer in history on a free.
You’d have to say that things worked out pretty well for all parties in the end, though.
Grealish won three successive titles with City and was an important player in their historic 2022-23 treble victory, albeit without ever showing the maverick talents with which he made his name at Aston Villa.
Messi, meanwhile, spent two relatively unhappy years with PSG in which he was booed by their supporters.
But he still won back-to-back Ligue 1 titles and notched 32 goals and 35 assists in 75 appearances – an output most other players can only dream of.
PSG, the league’s most dominant force, afforded him the luxury of taking it relatively easy, conserving his energy and planning his peak – like an Olympian – at the 2022 World Cup.
That didn’t go too badly, did it?
There’s an alternative reality out there in which Messi signed for City and failed to deliver in Qatar, arriving at the tournament a husk after a physically demanding 18 months in the Premier League, fresh from having lumps kicked out of him by James Tarkowski and Matt Lowton.
Is Sean Dyche, and Burnley’s fearsome reputation, responsible for Lionel Messi finally getting his hands on the World Cup?
That’s not for us to say (but yes – yes it is).
By Nestor Watach
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