On May 31, Luis Enrique will coach PSG in the Champions League final in Munich against Inter Milan, but he took time out to rewind to his days with Barcelona, in particular a fight with Lionel Messi. “Everyone thought it was easy to manage Barcelona with Messi, Neymar, and Suárez, but now it’s clear that it isn’t,” says Luis Enrique just days before the big European final.
The moment of friction came in 2015. In January 2015, Messi returned to Barcelona training a couple of days after his teammates, after spending New Year’s in Rosario. He arrived by plane with Dani Alves and Neymar. But for some reason Messi was in a bad mood. During the training, Messi fell in the opponent’s penalty area and Luis Enrique, who was refereeing, said, “siga siga” (go on),triggering protests from Messi. The situation escalated and Messi went after the coach in the dressing room and Clarin the newspaper reported that Neymar had to intervene to stub out the tension that day.
That weekend though, Messi was substituted in a loss to Real Sociedad. Messi was brought in only 13 minutes into the second half, didn’t have much of a role in the game, and was substituted. He ended up arguing with Enrique again, and didn’t turn up for training next day. “Until everything was resolved, there was a period of tension, which I certainly didn’t seek out, but which arose and which I had to deal with,” Luis Enrique recalled now.
In the recent past, in 2022, Messi too has spoken about that phase. “I had a special relationship with Luis Enrique. When he decided to leave, we tried to convince him to stay until the very end because we were still doing well. In 2015 January he benched me and there was a conflict, but it got resolved and we had a fantastic relationship,” Messi said.
Under Enrique’s leadership, Barca won two league titles, two Copa del Rey triumphs, a win at the Super Cup, and a Champions League title. “Today I can only speak highly of Leo Messi,” says Luis Enrique, who left Barça with an 80.29 percent effectiveness rate: “A beastly season.”
