Joan Laporta Claims Barcelona Once Rejected €250m Bid for Lionel Messi
Ex-Barcelona president and 2021 candidate Joan Laporta has claimed that Inter made a €250m transfer bid for Camp Nou superstar Lionel Messi in 2006, which would have shattered the world transfer record.
Messi is running down his current Barcelona contract and could leave as a free agent at the end of the season, having already had one serious attempt blocked last summer. It would end 20 years at Barca, during which time he has become one of the greatest players of all time.
But his career could easily have been so different had a proposed move to Inter been completed in 2006, at a time when Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o and Deco were the big names at Camp Nou.
The story of Inter’s interest in Messi around that time is already known, but Laporta has claimed that Barcelona resisted a colossal €250m offer.
“Nobody who loves Barcelona can have doubts about Messi. I hope I can be named president and then I’ll speak with him,” Laporta said on Spanish radio station Onda Cero.
“We rejected a €250m offer coming from Inter in 2006. [Massimo] Moratti wanted to bring him to his club,” the presidential hopeful added.
It wouldn’t have been the first time Inter offered a world record fee for a Barcelona forward, having previously poached Ronaldo from the Catalans in the summer of 1997.
Moratti’s longstanding interest in Messi was confirmed by the man himself earlier this year, claiming in an interview with La Stampa that he had a chance to do the deal but opted against it.
“I could have signed him when he was very young, but Barcelona was helping him to overcome his growth problems. I thought it was better for him to stay there,” Moratti declared.
Former Barcelona and Inter forward Luis Suarez, who won the Ballon d’Or in 1960, claimed in 2016 that Messi once signed a pre-contract agreement to join Inter when he was an adviser at San Siro.
“We could have got him when Barcelona had Deco, Ronaldinho, and Eto'o up front. I still have the pre-contractual agreement that he signed,” Suarez said on Radio Kiss Kiss in Italy.
It is also not the first time that Laporta has spoken about Inter’s supposed bid, although the details of his story have changed from when he previously told it in 2017. In that version, it was apparently only a €150m bid from Inter that was rejected, prompting Barcelona to raise his release clause.
“It was 2006 when Inter made an offer," the ex-Barca president told The Guardian.
"They were prepared to pay the €150million buyout clause, which is why we [later] raised it to €250m, but I always felt reassured by my relationship with his dad, Jorge.
"I told him: 'They'll have to pay the clause because I won't sell. He'll be happy here, he'll get glory. There, he'll only win financially. Your son's destined to be the greatest in history and here he'll have a team to help get there. He'll enjoy it.’”
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