This summer, the football world came to a standstill when Lionel Messi announced his intentions of leaving Barcelona.
Suddenly there were rumours flying everywhere linking Messi to clubs all over the world, Manchester City being the standout club.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Messi threaten to leave the Catalan giants, so can you tempt him away from the Camp Nou on FIFA 21’s Career Mode?
The answer is yes… if you set negotiation settings to loose.
FIFA have introduced the ‘one club’ player trait, which means players with the trait are highly unlikely to leave their one club if you play with tougher negotiation settings, Messi being one of those players.
YouTuber MGH took to the game to see whether or not he could sign Messi and for what price.
On his first attempt of negotiations with Barcelona, MGH offers the club £80 million, which is then counter offered by Barcelona with a price of £40 million, but would also include Riyad Mahrez in the deal, which MGH declines and offers the £80 million again which is accepted.
He decides to leave the deal for a week and tries again with fresh negotiations to see if he can get Messi for cheaper as Barca were very quick to accept the £80 million.
This time he offers £70 million, which is again counter offered by Barca asking for the same cash plus Mahrez deal. MGH again declines this and tries the £70 million offer again.
This time, however, Barcelona counteroffer with a cash sum of £94 million, £14 million more than the original agreed fee of £80 million, which obviously wasn’t going to be accepted.
He then tries £75 million which is accepted by Barcelona, meaning if you’re wanting to sign Messi on your own Career Mode, you'll want to offer somewhere between £75 to 80 million.
Now its time for those crucial contract talks with the GOAT himself.
Of course, Messi wants to play in a crucial role so don’t bother asking him to accept anything less. MGH also manages to get Messi to agree to a three-year contract. To get him to agree to sign, however, you need to be offering him a wage of around £350k-a-week with a signing bonus of £3,250,000.
Messi, of course, does only have a year left on his Barcelona contract, so if you’re patient and want to save money signing the Argentinian, you can wait till January and sign him on a free.