Barcelona are lining up a loan move for Inter Miami superstar Lionel Messi as they eye ‘one last dance’ with the Argentina superstar, according to reports.
The Barcelona legend will go down as one of the best, if not the best, player in the history of football when he eventually hangs up his boots.
Messi has scored 759 goals in 941 club appearances and 112 goals in 191 caps for Argentina with the forward winning everything the game has to offer, including eight Ballon d’Ors.
As a Barcelona player, Messi won ten La Liga titles, seven Copa del Reys, seven Spanish Super Cups, four Champions Leagues, three UEFA Super Cups and three FIFA Club World Cups.
And now reports in Spain are claiming that Messi ‘returns’ to Barcelona with the Catalan club’s president, Joan Laporta, seeking a loan move from Inter Miami.
A move would allow Messi to ‘get the farewell he deserves’ at new Spotify Camp Nou with a potential transfer providing Barcelona ‘an absolutely massive media impact’.
It is understood that David Beckham, who owns Inter Miami, has ‘firmly ruled out this option, but it could be strongly considered again in 2026’ with Messi hoping to hit top form for the World Cup, something that would be ‘much easier to do if he were competing in Europe and playing at Camp Nou’.
After being unable to say goodbye to Barcelona fans during the pandemic, Messi ‘would return to have one last dance, and continue expanding his list of achievements’.
Despite bigging up the possibility of a transfer back to Barcelona, the report claims that it’s ‘hard to believe Beckham would give him permission to join Barca temporarily’.
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Former Premier League striker Dion Dublin recently riled Messi supporters when he claimed that Cristiano Ronaldo is a “better goalscorer” than the Argentina superstar.
Dublin said: “I think Cristiano Ronaldo is a better goalscorer than Lionel Messi. I think Messi is the better footballer, but Ronaldo is the best goalscorer in the world.”
The former Coventry and Aston Villa star added: “This is how good Ronaldo was as a goalscorer; I scored 111 goals during my stint in the Premier League as a striker, he has scored something like 63 hat-tricks. How can someone have done that? It’s crazy!”
Former England manager Sam Allardyce, who was on the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast with Dublin, chimed in: “We had the best time of it watching Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo competing against each other year in, year out, in Spain for ten years or so on the trot.
“They were both hitting 30, 40 goals a season each season, with neither of them playing as a centre forward. Ronaldo might’ve ended up there in the later years but he’s always played wide, and Messi just played anywhere he wanted!
“The Ballon d’Or every year was just a case of wondering which one of those two it was going to be that year! It was an amazing time to just watch two world class players at the same time.
“I heard a statistic about how many goals Erling Haaland would have to score to catch Ronaldo’s tally, it was something like 50 goals a year! I remember when I first saw Ronaldo when he came on as a sub against Bolton when he’d just been bought from Portugal – he just destroyed Nicky Hunt in defence! I was standing there in the dugout thinking, ‘wow’.”