It was the day from hell for Barcelona. As news emerged that the club had sacked director of football Andoni Zubizarreta, assistant Carles Puyol quickly resigned from his role in a boardroom bloodbath that could have been perpetrated by Lord Sugar.
But perhaps the most significant and deeply concerning rumblings were emanating from the dressing room, with suggestions that Barcelona’s record goalscorer and greatest ever player is growing ever more discontent, and he is not afraid to let people know.
Losing two such influential executives amounted to an embarrassment for Barcelona; if Messi is indeed unhappy with life at the club it registers as a catastrophe. And now real questions are being asked as to the long-term future of the idol of Camp Nou.
It is not for nothing that Sport newspaper proclaims a 'Crisis Total!' on its back page on Tuesday.
Rival Catalan daily Mundo Deportivo carried an intriguing report on Monday which alleged a falling-out between Messi and Coach Luis Enrique on January 3 – one day before Barca lost 1-0 away to David Moyes’ Real Sociedad and failed to reclaim top spot in La Liga from Real Madrid.
Mundo Deportivo claimed a conflict erupted between coach and player due to the most innocuous of training-ground events. In a game of five-a-side, Enrique, it is said, gave a decision against Messi’s team, angering his star player. The argument went unresolved and unforgotten.
Spanish radio station COPE is even going so far as to suggest that Messi believes Barcelona will not be able to transform their fortunes with Enrique in charge, adding to what is apparently fast becoming a febrile atmosphere between the two influential figures.
Enrique had already given Messi an extended holiday until January 2 – a rare honour also afforded to Neymar and Dani Alves – but is said to have worked the Argentina captain hard on his return before angering him with his officiating during the five-a-side contest.
Messi’s absence from the starting XI against Real Sociedad was a surprise on Sunday, if understandable given the apparent context of his extended holiday. Mundo Deportivo’s reports cast new light on his substitute role though.
Having entered the game at half-time and failed to swing momentum Barcelona’s way, Messi was then missing from training on Monday morning, with Barcelona putting his absence down to a bout of gastroenteritis.
There is nothing to suggest that Messi does not have an upset stomach. But the incident did have strangely similar features to an event in the 2011-12 season which showed Messi’s petulant side – a facet of his character which is largely neglected.
The controversial episode is recounted in Guillem Balague’s book, ‘Messi’, and was identified by journalist and Eurosport contributor Ken Early on Twitter. Balague wrote: “In that 2011-12 season, the last time Messi was seen on the bench was against Real Sociedad after a transatlantic flight to play for the national team.
“Barcelona went 2-0 up but the local team brought it back to 2-2. He went on in the sixty-second minute but the deadlock remained. According to El Pais, Leo did not attend training the following day, disgusted once again at not starting. For reactions like those, some commentators call Messi, a ‘child champion’.”
A ‘child champion’. It is a phrase which calls to mind perhaps the most infamous insight into Messi’s sporadic disregard for authority: the ballad of the coke can and Pep Guardiola. It is a rather tangential tale transmitted by Hans Backe, who managed Thierry Henry and Rafael Marquez at New York Red Bulls.
He told Swedish TV in 2013: "It was three hours before the game when all the players were sitting and eating, and Messi said he wanted a can of coke. Guardiola replied that no player should drink cola three hours before a game. So Messi got up and left, returned a few minutes later with a can of cola and drank it right in front of Guardiola and the rest of the team.
"Imagine what would have happened when a player with the profile of Messi goes against the coach in this way? It was a war Guardiola could not win; it was impossible."
Is it, then, completely out of the question that the ostensibly rather baseless rumours regarding Lionel Messi following Chelsea and two of their players on Instagram last night are actually significant? He certainly chose a rather inflammatory day to do so, in the knowledge that rumours regarding his future were growing once again.
And Messi is not just a mindless, serial selfie indulger – he knows how to use Instagram to make a point, having highlighted what he perceived to be particularly close attention from doping testers recently. On the day he missed training, and less than 24 hours after he was benched, with reports proliferating of a rift with his coach, was the timing entirely coincidental?
After all, there has been the background radiation of discontent throughout the season.
It has been suggested that the Spanish state’s decision to pursue him in a tax evasion trial has caused Messi to rethink his future in the country, with Johan Cruyff saying in November: "What I can imagine is that Messi is pretty annoyed with the tax things, because it is something joint with the club, and he is being investigated every three or four years.
"These are disagreeable things that do not worry you too much, but they annoy you. You want to play football, and live happily -- you are content with your football, but there are other things that annoy you.
"[Although] the board always backs him, there are internal things going on, I imagine. I have never heard the board say that Messi needs to look out, or that he is a problem, but maybe internally things are going on that neither you nor I know about."
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In the same month, Messi gave a telling interview to Argentinian paper Ole in which he said: "At the moment, I am living in the present. I am thinking about having a great year and winning the trophies we want at Barcelona - nothing else. Later, we will see. In football, things change all the time. Although I have always said I would like to stay there forever, sometimes everything does not always go as you want."
Messi leaving Barcelona once seemed impossible, so integral was he to their team, style, culture and vision. But if he has become cut adrift from his coach, and left disaffected by his legal problems, perhaps it is no longer unthinkable.
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