EDIT: Paul Pogba has tested positive for COVID-19. Aaron Wan-Bissaka is in quarantine after a vacation to Dubai. More headaches for OGS and the Man Utd suits.
Players need to think long and hard before traveling on holiday. If I were a manger I would discourage it.
Maybe Barcelona has been mismanaged but isn't this management is the same management that brought in Messi, Ronaldinho, added 4 UCL trophies, and scored like 10 of the last 15 La Liga trophies? Not to mention their 2009 (IIRC) where they scored all six trophies a once in a lifetime record. It was also the management that had a very successful managers with the team like Pep Guardiola and Frank Rijkaard? Why somehow they became the bad management?
Either way I am happy their club is falling apart, their fans were so flamboyant and their claims of how Messi is way above all other football legends like Maradona and Pele...I want them to feel the pain of going trophy-less and hiding in shame of the club they decided to support in its prime...Historically, I believe, Barcelona was not a huge football club. AC Milan, Liverpool, and Real Madrid were much more in the spotlight.
I'd suggest reading some of Sid Lowe's excellent journalism on Barca (And Spanish football in general) over the years. Both Real and Barca are financially and politically supercharged environments. Real Madrid are located in Spain's capital and were the team favored by the Franco dictatorship and Madrid elites for decades, so their dominance is not really due to shrewd management so much as economic and political privilege. Likewise Barca, while not favored by the national elite, became the symbol of Catalan resistance to Franco for many years and the region remains very independently-minded.
In short, Spanish football is not just sporting hysteria - it's Spanish politics in a nutshell in many ways. Arguing whether Messi is better than Ronaldo is a coded argument for whether your loyalties lie primarily with Spain or Catalonia. Spain is a very disunited country right now, and Messi's transfer request is politically seismic.
With all that being said, Both Real and Barca have been run in a very short-sighted way for many years. Blaming the current president for all this is equally short-sighted. Most of the people in Spain who are pointing the Big Finger of Blame -including the fans - should probably also be pointing at themselves. There is plenty of blame to spread around.
But the club is not falling apart. Sure, this is a low point and it could be years before they are at the same high level again. But they are still, and will remain, one of the richest and most-watched clubs on the planet. For the richest clubs, it really doesn't matter how badly they are run. They remain huge, rich, and stacked with talent. They are ensconced in power and privilege. Players want to play for them. Their academies are large. The deck is stacked hugely in their favor. There's nothing remotely fair about it.
Symbolically, Messi departing is a big moment, but from a sporting standpoint it's not
that big of a deal. For example -Crispy Ronaldo was brought to Juventus for one purpose - to win the Champions League. He kept banging in the goals but you will notice that the Champions League trophy was engraved "Bayern Munchen" this year, not "Juventus".
