Of course, these incidents probably can’t be taken that seriously and can probably be fairly easily explained, but it’s not going to aid speculation that Messi is unhappy at Barcelona under new boss Luis Enrique and is angling for a move to Chelsea. It was claimed that he had a bad tummy (wah poor baby) which was why he missed training (sure) and it’s hardly helped that he’s also started following Thibaut Courtois and Filipe Luis on Instagram too, which only serves to push him closer to a link with Chelsea.
It’s been widely speculated that Messi has a problem with Enrique and doesn’t believe that Barcelona can win anything with him at the helm. He was on the bench against Real Sociedad and was clearly unhappy with this development when he came on, which you can see in the video below. It’s very reminiscent of last season when he wasn’t happy playing under Gerardo Martino.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTdhstGxewk
The official line is that Enrique benched Messi so as to save him for bigger games later in the season – even though there had just been a two week break in Spain for Christmas – and this is backed up by the fact that Dani Alves and Neymar didn’t start either, but there’s another rumour coming out of the Nou Camp that it was punishment for Messi starting a fight with him during training last week. Apparently Messi was unhappy with a decision given against him by Enrique in a five a side training match – yeah, you read that correctly – and five months of tension between the two exploded as they squared up to each other in a slanging match in front of the whole team.
It seems unlikely that Messi will leave Barcelona for Chelsea – it’s almost unthinkable that Barca would let him go, even for the 200 million Euro fee that is being banded around – but making these not so subtle hints that he’s unhappy at the moment is probably going to mean that Luis Enrique is going to be out of a job pretty soon unless he manages to win pretty much everything this season. It’s a shame that Messi is turning into a bit of a prima donna as he always seemed like such a humble and likeable guy, but between last season and this season’s sulks, he’s turning into a bit of a knob – even if he still pulls out the smiles when performing outrageous skills on Japanese game shows.
