Lionel Messi will be hoping to spring the biggest upset of the tournament against his former club in the upcoming FIFA Club World Cup round of 16 match between Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Miami this Sunday.
Paris Saint-Germain have come to the Club World Cup as newly crowned champions of Europe, but a meeting with the Inter Miami of Lionel Messi in the last 16 this Sunday brings back memories of unhappier times for the French club.
PSG’s stunning 5-0 demolition of Inter Milan in Munich at the end of last month which allowed them to win the UEFA Champions League for the first time completed an incredible season for the Qatar-backed side under the coaching of Luis Enrique.
It is no coincidence that PSG achieved their crowning glory in their first season after definitively shifting their focus away from signing superstar players to instead allow a brilliant coach to work with a hungry, dynamic young team.
Kylian Mbappe’s move a year ago to Real Madrid followed the departures in 2023 of Neymar, the world’s most expensive signing when he joined in 2017, and Messi, in the same summer Luis Enrique was appointed.
When PSG pounced in August 2021 to sign Messi after a cash-strapped Barcelona were unable to keep him, the French side logically thought the Argentinian could be the man to deliver elusive Champions League glory.
Messi, who was 34 at the time, thought the same thing.
“My dream is to win another Champions League, and I think I am in the ideal place to have that chance and to do it,”
he said at his unveiling.
Alas, it did not work out that way, either in Messi’s first season in Paris, under compatriot Mauricio Pochettino in 2021/22, or in the next campaign under Christophe Galtier.
PSG had got to the Champions League final and then semi-finals in the two seasons prior to Messi’s arrival, so he looked like the final piece in the jigsaw.
Instead, they went backwards with him in the side, going out of Europe’s elite club competition in the last 16 two years running.
Messi’s relationship with PSG reached point of no return after ‘humiliating’ incident in 2023
Lionel Messi’s time at Paris Saint-Germain came to a rather bitter end in 2023 and it was marked by uncertainty.
It wasn’t sure that the Argentine would renew his contract and the final straw was a pivotal moment in May 2023, when Messi, without the club’s authorization, skipped training to attend a sponsor meeting in Saudi Arabia.
As a result, PSG took disciplinary action, banning Messi for two weeks and docking his wages. This move was seen as a statement by the club to show that no individual was above the institution.
Recall, Softfootball reported that Lionel Messi is set to meet PSG but this time wearing Inter Miami pink, not Barcelona blue or PSG navy. The reunion is filled with personal and professional history, and as ever, Messi will be central to the story.
PSG got that Champions League in their racket, finally joining the club whose door they’d been trying to batter down for a dozen years.
Now they need to start collecting more big, international trophies to confirm their spot in perpetuity. Winning the inaugural, expanded edition of the Club World Cup seems like a great way to do that.
Losing to an MLS team? Even one led by Lionel Messi? You can imagine what the critics would do with that.
