FC Barcelona have reacted after Lionel Messireluctantly announced he was staying with the club.

After handing in a transfer request and missing training, the Argentine put an end to the dramatic saga on Friday afternoon but not without opening up about his fractured relationship with president Josep Maria Bartomeu and his frustration with the situation at the club.

Messi’s tell-all interview has unsurprisingly dominated headlines and Barca responded to it by basically pretending the whole thing never happened.

They posted a quote from Messi underlining his love for the club, along with a picture of him in the new quote.

Messi is now expected to return to training ahead of the new season but has been incredibly open about the the only reason he has stayed put being because he did not want to enter a legal dispute with the club he loves so dearly.

“There was another way and it was to go to trial,” he said in an in-depth interview with Goal.

“I would never go to court against Barca because it is the club that I love, which gave me everything since I arrived.

“It is the club of my life, I have made my life here.

“Barca gave me everything and I gave it everything. I know that it never crossed my mind to take Barca to court.”

The fact remains though, that he was genuinely serious about ending his glittering stint with the Blaugrana. However his decision wasn’t a direct reaction to the 8-2 humbling at the hands of Bayern Munich, he had told Bartomeu on multiple occasions in the past year.

“I told the club, including the president, that I wanted to go. I’ve been telling him that all year. I believed it was time to step aside,” Messi stated.

“I believed that the club needed more young players, new players and I thought my time in Barcelona was over. I felt very sorry because I always said that I wanted to finish my career here.

“It was a very difficult year, I suffered a lot in training, in games and in the dressing room. Everything became very difficult for me and there came a time when I considered looking for new ambitions.

“It did not come because of the Champions League result against Bayern, no – I had been thinking about the decision for a long time.

“I told the president and, well, the president always said that at the end of the season I could decide if I wanted to go or if I wanted to stay and in the end he did not keep his word.”

Messi and Barcelona failed to win a trophy in the most recent campaign, leading to him providing some damning comments on the current predicament.

He said: “I always said I wanted to end here and I always said I wanted to stay here. That I wanted a winning project and to win titles with the club, to continue expanding the legend of Barcelona.

“And the truth is that there has been no project or anything for a long time, they juggle and cover holes as things go by. As I said before, I always thought about the welfare of my family and the club.”

source:- sportbible