{"id":254784,"date":"2020-09-05T08:31:24","date_gmt":"2020-09-05T07:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=254784"},"modified":"2020-09-05T08:32:02","modified_gmt":"2020-09-05T07:32:02","slug":"messi-makes-dramatic-u-turn-sets-to-stay-with-barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=254784","title":{"rendered":"Messi makes dramatic u-turn, sets to stay with Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Lionel
Barcelona\u2019s Argentine forward Lionel Messi celebrates after scoring during the Spanish league football match between FC Barcelona and Real Sociedad at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona on March 7, 2020. (Photo by LLUIS GENE \/ AFP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lionel Messi has confirmed he will stay at Barcelona against his wishes and hinted his desire to avoid a courtroom battle was the overriding reason behind the decision.<\/p>\n

The superstar\u2019s bombshell U-turn was officially announced on Friday evening, although Messi has once again doubled down on his criticism of the board and its under-fire president Josep Bartomeu.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old club captain announced he is finally abandoning attempts at a sensational move to Manchester City this summer in a recorded interview despite having initially demanded to leave.<\/p>\n

Messi told Goal in an explosive admission: \u2018When I communicated my wish to leave to my wife and children, it was a brutal drama. \u2018The whole family began crying, my children did not want to leave Barcelona, nor did they want to change schools.<\/p>\n

\u2018But 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 it, because it is very difficult, but you have to compete.<\/p>\n

\u2018At least compete for it and let us not fall apart in Rome, Liverpool, Lisbon. All that led me to think about that decision that I wanted to carry out.\u2019<\/p>\n

Vanguard<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barcelona\u2019s Argentine forward Lionel Messi celebrates after scoring during the Spanish league football match between FC Barcelona and Real Sociedad at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona on March 7, 2020. (Photo by LLUIS GENE \/ AFP) Lionel Messi has confirmed he will stay at Barcelona against his wishes and hinted his desire to avoid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,5006,15461,10175,2398],"class_list":["post-254784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-barcelona","tag-guardiola","tag-koeman","tag-man-city","tag-messi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/254785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}