Lionel Messi will soon mark his 20th year with Barcelona and he has shown no indications of a plan to leave. To date, the team skipper appeared ready to finish his football days in Catalonia but there were instances in the past that Messi nearly exited from Camp Nou.
In 2008, Inter Milan tried luring the Argentine superstar out of Spain and while Italian club "went all out" to win the Barca captain's signature at that time, Messi decided to stick with the Spanish giants.
According to Marco Branca, who served as Inter's technical director, the team made the move convince Messi to switch sides by offering a deal that would be hard to refuse. Still, the six-time Ballon d'Or winner rejected the overture.
Branca said it was proven then that loyalty has a high premium to Messi and it turned out that fending off the attraction of money was easy for the Barcelona forward.
"We moved for him but Leo did not want to leave Barcelona ... He was very grateful to the club. Money does not always come first," Goal reported the former Inter executive as saying, citing Italian publication Libero as saying.
Branca's tale was confirmed by Massimo Moratti, who admitted that for Inter then, Messi was a dream a signing but transferring to a new club was not in the mind of the Argentina international.
"He's everyone's dream but he will not leave Barcelona ... He's still the greatest player of all," recalled Moratti, who was president for Inter when the club tried unsuccessfully to get Messi out of La Liga.
It was not the last time though that Messi was tempted to leave where he had started. Eight years later, the 32-year-old saw himself caught in a legal mess. A Spanish court found the Barca captain and his father guilty of tax fraud and the punishment was 21 months of suspended prison term plus the subsequent fine.
Mirror said it was a devastating moment for the South American and he thought of just leaving everything he had in Spain and melt away. However, Messi never thought of abandoning the Catalan giants.
Messi thought he was the victim of injustice and the circumstances depicted him as a lawbreaker.
"At that time, with the mess of the treasury, I wanted to leave, not for wanting to leave Barca but wanting to leave Spain," Messi was reported as saying.
He shared further that his family was painted in a bad light and the most disappointing part was that people were completely unaware of the real situation. The crushing feeling of being mistreated nearly drove him to just get out of Spain, the Barcelona superstar admitted.
