Xavi claims Joan Laporta blocked Lionel Messi’s homecoming transfer

Former Barcelona manager Xavi Hernandez has claimed that Joan Laporta deliberately blocked Lionel Messi’s return to the club in 2023.

Undoubtedly the greatest player in Barcelona history, Messi was forced to leave the club in 2021 because they couldn’t afford to hand him a contract extension.

Since then, he has been tipped for a sensational return. However, Xavi in a new interview with La Vanguardia just a week before the Barcelona presidential elections, claim Laporta blocked the transfer when Messi wanted to rejoin.

Xavi who was sacked from the role in May 2024, claimed that a deal for Messi was practically finalised in early 2023.

He even pitched it to Messi’s father Jorge as a magical finale, saying: “We are going to do a last dance like Jordan’s.” Ultimately, the collapsed deal saw the forward instead move to MLS side Inter Miami upon the expiration of his contract at Paris Saint-Germain that summer.

Joan Laporta celebrates accused of blocking Messi’s second transfer to Barcelona (Photo by Luciano Lima/Getty Images)

Xavi said: “The president isn’t telling the truth there either. Leo was signed. In January 2023, after winning the World Cup, we got in touch, and he told me he was excited about coming back, and I saw it. We talked until March, and I told him, ‘Okay, when you give me the OK, I’ll tell the president because I see it as a good move from a footballing perspective.’ Then what happened? The president started negotiating the contract with Leo’s father, and we had La Liga’s approval, but it was the president who threw everything out. Did he explain why? Laporta told me, and I quote, that if Leo came back, he was going to wage war against him and that he couldn’t allow it. And then suddenly Leo stopped answering my calls because he’d been told on the other end that it couldn’t be done. And when I called his father, I said, ‘This can’t be, Jorge,’ and he said, ‘Talk to the president.’ And I insisted that we’d been talking with Leo for five months, it was a done deal, there were no doubts about his footballing ability, and financially we were going to Montjuïc and we were going to do it.”

Xavi went on to reveal that the whole saga damaged his relationship with Messi.

Lionel Messi during his playing days at FC Barcelona. (Photo by Pressinphoto/Icon Sport via Getty Images)

“Did it take a while before I spoke with Messi again? Yes, because he thought I was part of the whole scheme. It affected my relationship with Leo a lot, but now it’s good again,” Xavi said. “He knows that now, he understands it now, but there was a period when I couldn’t communicate with him. It was a shame, but it was because of those who are in charge.”

Xavi added on whether Messi could still retrace his steps: “Leo Messi is never returning to Barcelona simply because Laporta doesn’t want that. It not because of La Liga or Jorge Messi is asking for money, that’s all a lie. It’s Laporta who is telling his camp that the club can’t afford him.”