Lionel Messi is apparently all set to join Paris Saint-Germain from Barcelona.
It is the end of an era but Mauricio Pochettino now looks like he’ll have an absolutely mouth-watering front three on his hands.
But what does that have to do with Newcastle United?
Joe Morrison, who worked for the club as Head of Digital Media between 2002 and 2005, has now made a bold claim about how Messi’s future could have been different had Newcastle been taken over last summer.
If that PIF deal had gone through, Morrison feels Newcastle would have had the finances to lure Messi.
He adds that they’d have had the money to spend to get the rest of the squad up to a standard where they could have genuinely been in the conversation for the Argentine this summer.
That’s a hugely bold claim and given the feeling of deflation around this transfer window now, it takes some imagining to visualise.
Morrison is now a TV anchor for Facebook, based in Barcelona, which when added to his Newcastle links, makes him well-placed to comment on the Messi situation in a Magpies context.
Would Messi have come to Newcastle?
PSG have had a pretty free run at Messi, primarily because nobody else can really afford him.
Manchester City could have put a package together, but on the day that Messi’s Barcelona departure was confirmed, they’d given their number ten shirt to British record signing Jack Grealish.
Newcastle would’ve needed to make the Champions League last season for Messi to even consider it.
It feels like a big stretch to say that even a mega-rich version of Newcastle could have signed Messi, but Morrison clearly feels it could have happened.
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