If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
That certainly seemed to be the mindset Lionel Messi had when he went to renegotiate his contract with Barcelona in 2020.
Details of his demands were leaked to the public by the Spanish media on Tuesday night, with it being revealed that the Argentine star wanted the Catalan giants to provide his and Luis Suarez’s family with executive boxes at the Nou Camp.
That was not all, as Messi also demanded an £8.7m signing-on fee, a 10 per cent salary increase in 2021-22 and 2022-23 with three per cent annual interest, and a private jet to fly his family to and from Argentina every Christmas.
To cap it all off, he wanted the club to lower his buyout clause from £610m to just £8,700.
Barcelona agreed to all but two of Messi’s demands – they were unwilling to lower his buyout clause to £8,700, and they wanted to make his signing-on bonus conditional on whether the club’s income returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Messi subsequently walked away from the renewal discussions, and informed the club of his desire to leave. He ended up staying that summer, but left to join PSG the following year.
The seven-time Ballon d’Or winner is far from the only footballer to push his luck at the negotiating table, though. In fact, attempting to put in bizarre clauses is far more common than some may think.
In light of Messi’s requests being revealed, Sportsmail has drawn up a list of 10 of the most outrageous contract demands by footballers over the years.
Source: Dailymail.co.uk