Bayern Munich CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge admits he “laughed” when hearing the sums involved at Lionel Messi’s contract at Barcelona.
The full details of Messi’s contract at the Camp Nou were revealed earlier this month by a report in El Mundo and has dominated Barcelona news in the weeks since.
Among many revelations of the 80-page document detailing Messi’s multiple clauses, was the headline figure that he earned €555.237.619 over the course of the four-year deal, with El Periódico de Catalunya calculating that the player would pay €370m to the Spanish Treasury in that timespan.
Read more: Barcelona on the verge of bankruptcy: €1,173m in debt, €730m in short-term
Rummenigge has previously said of the Blaugrana that when “I read about Barcelona’s debts, I almost choked” and now he has spoken specifically about Messi’s contract, which he believes is an indication of why football spending has gone too far.
Rummenigge told an interview with Corriere, as per Marca: “Lionel Messi’s salary? I laughed…I can only congratulate him, because he managed to make an astronomical contract!
“In the last ten years we have all made mistakes, because we have spent more and more in favour of players and agents. The pandemic has shown that we must go back and return to a more rational model. I hope it is possible, but it will not be easy.
“A salary cap? Maybe it would be a good initiative, but in 2008 with Platini as UEFA president and Infantino as CEO, we went to Brussels to see if it was a viable path: politicians have always told us that we would be going against European law. Perhaps now is the right time to draw up a new initiative and correct what we have been doing for the last ten years.”
Messi will be out of contract at the Camp Nou in June and his future beyond the current campaign remains unclear.
