BARCELONA • Lionel Messi has hit back at Barcelona sporting director Eric Abidal after the Frenchman blamed slackness in the dressing room for the recent firing of coach Ernesto Valverde.
In an interview with Spanish daily Sport on Tuesday, the Frenchman said that under Valverde, many players had been unhappy, had not worked hard enough or communicated properly.
He and club president Josep Maria Bartomeu sacked the 55-year-old last month, replacing him with Quique Setien.
Argentinian ace and team captain Messi, 32, has since fired a salvo at across his own ranks just as the club are trying to get him to sign a contract extension.
"Sincerely I don't like doing this kind of thing but everyone has to be made responsible for their actions and what they say," he said on Instagram yesterday, circling an image of Abidal's quote on Sport.
"We the players in the dressing room are the first to admit it when we haven't played well.
"The directors need to take their responsibilities too.
"I believe that if you talk about the players (in this way) you should name names.
"If not, it makes everyone dirty and gives air to things that are said which are not true."
Abidal, 40, had told Sport that "lots of players were not satisfied and nor did they work a lot", adding: "There was also an issue of internal communication.
"The relationship between manager-dressing room has always been good but there are things, as a former player, I can smell."
Abidal, who has recovered from liver cancer diagnosed in 2011, and Messi played together at Barcelona between 2007 and 2013.
He returned to the club after retirement in 2014 to become sporting director in June 2018.
On Tuesday, Abidal had also spoken glowingly of Messi and had sounded optimistic of an extended deal. The forward signed his last extension in 2017, with his current deal running to next year.
"I'm sure we'll come to a deal with Leo because he knows we need him. He's on top form, enjoying his game and breaking records," he said.
"We as a club want to make him even happier and to do that by surrounding him with the right teammates. We want a strong team with a good everyday feeling and above all, we want to win titles."
Messi's latest outburst is all the more significant because he has a clause in his contract which enables him to unilaterally walk away for free at the end of the season.
It will also have lasting consequences, bringing internal division into the open and laying bare the deep dissatisfaction many in the dressing room feel with the club's board.
An atmosphere of tension already surrounded the club, with criticism growing of Bartomeu and the accusations of failure at an institutional as well as a footballing level.
That sense of crisis and collapse was deepened on Tuesday when it was confirmed that Ousmane Dembele will be out for the season with a ruptured thigh tendon, while Luis Suarez is also not expected to be back to full fitness until the final weeks of the season at best.
The spectre of losing Messi, so often the man holding Barcelona together in recent years, is a terrifying one for the club.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS, THE GUARDIAN
