Neymar out at PSG? It should be Messi they're showing the door

FT Desk

Updated: 29 Jun 2022 20:11 BST
4 min read

Neymar was the assumed target when PSG chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi spoke about the end of the "bling-bling" era at the club, but they should be getting rid of Lionel Messi first.

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With Christophe Galtier set to be appointed as the new coach at Paris Saint-Germain ahead of Zinedine Zidane, and local boy Kylian Mbappe given a new contract which lifts him above both Neymar and Messi as the club's highest-paid player, changes are afoot.

The Champions League has continued to elude the Qatar-backed club while supposed stars of the world game have flattered to deceive at the Parc des Princes, and Al-Khelaifi recently said he would like to see a Paris-born XI in the future.

Mbappe BLOWS Messi and Neymar away with his astronomical new contract 💸https://t.co/I1OIBfdu8Y
— Football Transfers (@Transfersdotcom) May 22, 2022

"We want players who love the club, who love to fight, who love to win," he told French daily newspaper Le Parisien. "And we want this mentality to spread throughout the club."

Neymar was assumed to be the primary target of the comments, the Brazilian missing at least 10 league games in every single season since swapping Barcelona for PSG for a world record €222 million in 2017, and now linked with potential moves to Juventus and Chelsea among others.

But it is Neymar's former Barca colleague Messi's showings in 2021/22 that should be the biggest cause for concern amongst the top brass in the French capital.

Six league goals

PSG won the league at a canter, but while Neymar contributed 13 goals to their 10th Ligue 1 triumph, Messi managed just six. Lionel Messi. Six league goals.

There are coherent arguments to regard Messi as the greatest player of all time, and his most staunch of defenders will point to the fact that his starting position for PSG last season was significantly more withdrawn on the right than was Neymar's on the left.

But six league goals? Messi occupied a similar position in his record-setting spell with Barcelona, and you have to go all the way back to 2005/06 for the last time he only managed six league strikes.

But that was his first full season in Barca's first-team, and he managed that haul from 17 appearances, just 11 of them starts. He started 24 league games for PSG last term, and five of his goals came against Nantes, Lorient, Lens and Montpellier - there were no game-changing interventions against Marseille or Monaco.

Messi might have scored five more in the Champions League, but braces against Club Brugge and RB Leipzig in the group stages were hardly why Paris signed the legendary Argentine.

Messi also reportedly had clause in his PSG contract that he could put country ahead of club - Argentina able to use PSG's facilities when in Europe and Messi able to skip league games for international duty, including friendlies.

That might have been a big ask anyway, but for the player then to play in second gear should be unforgivable. The end of bling-bling? Messi no longer even glistens in Paris.