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    N.F.L. Season Kicks Off With Protests

    After an off-season of social and political turmoil, N.F.L. players made it clear on the night of the season opener that they will continue to shine a light on social injustice and police brutality against African Americans.The Houston Texans, who were in Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday to face the Chiefs for the first game of the year, remained in their locker room during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is known as the Black national anthem. After the protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May, the league said the song would be played before every game in Week 1 of the season.The Texans stayed inside to avoid having to decide whether to kneel or stand during either or both songs. The Chiefs lined up along their sideline while “The Star-Spangled Banner” played. One player, defensive end Alex Okafor, knelt and raised an arm. A teammate put his hand on Okafor’s shoulder. Many other players linked arms.NBC Sports did not show the Texans’ empty sideline.After the anthem was played, the Texans ran on to the field to a smattering of boos from the crowd, which had been reduced to 22 percent capacity because of the coronavirus. Both teams then were booed as they linked arms in the middle of the field for a moment of silence. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson, who were both outspoken this summer about on the need for change, were at the center of the line, arms linked. The protests at the N.F.L. opener were the latest in a wave of demonstrations by professional athletes that began late last month with the widespread postponement of games as players in the N.B.A., the W.N.B.A., Major League Baseball and other leagues chose to walk out in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.Even though about 70 percent of its players are Black, the N.F.L. has wrestled for several years with how to react to player protests and calls to address systematic racism and social injustice. The league largely ignored quarterback Colin Kaepernick when he knelt during the national anthem throughout the 2016 season to protest police brutality against African Americans.But after President Trump in September 2017 called on teams to fire players who did not stand for the anthem, the league and its owners tried to tamp down protests while also pledging tens of millions of dollars to groups fighting social injustice. The league backed off trying to ban protests during the anthem after the players’ union filed a grievance.Only a handful of players protested the past couple of seasons. But the issue was reignited this summer with nationwide protests after Floyd’s death. In early June, Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for not listening to the concerns of African-American players earlier. At the same time, President Trump renewed his attacks on the league.Broadcasters, who pay the league billions of dollars for the rights to show games, have largely tiptoed around the protests. But in a sign of the new attitude, Cris Collinsworth, a former player who was one of the announcers calling Thursday’s game for NBC Sports, lent his support to the protesters.“I stand behind these players 100 percent. 100 percent,” he said before kickoff. “What they’re trying to do is create positive change in this country that frankly is long, long overdue.”The bulk of the N.F.L. games will be on Sunday, and it is already clear there will be more protests. About an hour before the Chiefs and Texans kicked off, members of the Miami Dolphins took aim at the league’s efforts to address systematic racism and said they, too, would remain in the locker room during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”In a video they posted on Twitter, and which was first reported by ESPN, the players said they did not appreciate the league’s empty marketing slogans, which they called “fluff and empty gestures.”“We don’t need another publicity parade, so we’ll just stay inside until it’s time to play the game,” the players said, referring to their game against the New England Patriots on Sunday.Playing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” before games, they said, “is just a way to save face.”“We need changed hearts, not just a response to pressure,” they added.The video ended with Dolphins Coach Brian Flores, one of just three African-American head coaches in the league, repeating the message, “We’ll just stay inside.”The league this summer approved a plan for players to wear decals on the backs of their helmets with the names of victims of racist violence. Teams are stenciling the words “End Racism” in the end zones, and the N.F.L. has encouraged teams to use their stadiums as polling centers on Election Day.Some of the league’s biggest stars are getting messages across in advertisements. Mahomes, who in July signed a 10-year contract worth as much as $500 million in July, appeared in an Adidas ad in which he said: “We’re gonna be playing sports. But at the same time we’re gonna be taking action, and we’re gonna be making change in the world.”Mahomes has been a vocal supporter of voter registration initiatives and fighting voter suppression.Like Goodell, some N.F.L. team owners have said they support the players’ right to protest. Last week, John Mara, co-owner of the Giants, said he preferred that players stand for the national anthem, but that he would back those who did not.“I’m going to support your right to do that because I believe in the First Amendment, and I believe in the right of people, especially players, to take a knee in silent protest if that’s what they want to do,” he said. More

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    Advertisers Flock to N.F.L. Broadcasts as a ‘Safe Haven’

    The N.F.L. season kickoff is giving the advertising industry reason to rejoice after months of disruption related to the pandemic and civil unrest.Media companies and marketing executives are looking forward to a boost in TV ratings amid uncertainty in other professional and college sports leagues over how their seasons will proceed. NBC said it sold out of ad space for the season-opening game on Thursday night, between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans, with revenue up substantially from last year and an average 30-second commercial costing nearly $900,000.Football tends to be far more attractive to advertisers than basketball, baseball and hockey combined, according to the research firm Kantar. The 2019 football regular season, playoffs and Super Bowl generated an estimated $4.3 billion in ad revenue for CBS, Fox and NBC, with nearly $200 million coming in the first week.With broadcast rights contracts expiring starting next year, analysts from the research firm MoffettNathanson predicted in an investor note on Thursday that the league would be able to command “gigantic increases for the upcoming cycle of new N.F.L. contracts,” with some networks paying up to 75 percent more for their packages. Current media partners “all seemingly are eager to extend their current relationships,” the analysts wrote, estimating that the total annual N.F.L. price tag will rise to $8.82 billion from $5.62 billion.ESPN, which suffered an advertising slump in its most recent quarter because of a dearth of N.B.A. and other sports programming, celebrated the N.F.L.’s return with a commercial set to Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” Other new N.F.L.-theme commercials include a Progressive spot featuring Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, a Subway ad poking fun at New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick’s unemotional personality and a Lowe’s ad inspired by the Carolina Panthers’ home stadium.Frito-Lay tapped the “Friday Night Lights” director Peter Berg to helm a commercial called “’Twas the Night Before Kickoff,” featuring appearances by Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski and other football luminaries. The spot was filmed in California, Florida and Texas with 90 percent of the crew working remotely.“This year, the return of the N.F.L. matters more than ever,” Rachel Ferdinando, the company’s chief marketing officer, said in a statement.With the Big Ten and Pac-12 college football leagues postponing their seasons, and a shortage of new scripted entertainment, many clients have shifted ad spending to the N.F.L., media buyers said.Tom McGovern, president of the sports marketing agency Optimum Sports, said that companies saw the N.F.L. as a “safe haven” and a “beacon of hope.” After ad spending slumped in the pandemic, football will capture “a greater share of a smaller pie,” he said.“We are directing clients to the N.F.L. as a very viable place to spend dollars for people who need to reach mass audiences,” he said. “The N.F.L. is the first sport that is returning in its comfort zone — in its regular time frame in its regular season.”In addition to commercials, some companies are trying to reach customers through digital experiences designed to make viewers feel closer to the game. With stadiums sitting largely unoccupied, Bud Light worked out a deal with the N.F.L. and Twitter that gives fans a chance to interact with players during matches through its so-called Showtime Cam.While health restrictions are forcing many brands to divert funds from in-person events, marketing executives are finding that switching to virtual versions allows them to include more people than would physically fit on a field and offers better access to fans’ data.“If we brought this proposition to the N.F.L. during a normal season, I don’t know that there would be the same level of partnership or willingness to try it,” said Nick Kelly, a vice president at Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bud Light’s parent company. “But in the future, all the broadcasters are going to try to monetize this sort of thing.” More

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    Sitting in Silence With 5,000 Fans: The New Sound of Japanese Sports

    TOKYO — As the players drove the ball down the field, I suddenly heard the distinct crinkle of a plastic bag a full four rows in front of me, where a man was pulling out a chicken drumstick to eat.This was the sound of Japanese professional soccer in the era of the coronavirus.While the major sports leagues in the United States and Europe are playing mostly before empty stands or cardboard cutouts, fans in Japan have been attending games since early July, after a four-month hiatus.But there are trade-offs.In normal times, Japanese fans are not only loud, they are also extremely orchestrated and utterly disciplined. Nonstop through a match, they sing, cheer, chant, bang drums and wave enormous team flags — a boisterous spectacle that often rivals the actual play on the field for entertainment value.Now, most of those activities are banned for fear that people might be roused into a frenzy of shouting, with any spray becoming a vector for spreading the virus.So when I attended a home match on a recent Sunday surrounded by nearly 4,600 fans of FC Tokyo, one of 18 teams in the top tier of the Japan Professional Football League, or J-League, the spectators were scrupulously quiet — except for an occasional crinkle of a food wrapper or a spontaneous burst of applause.ImageStaff members ready to check body temperatures at the entrance to the stadium.Without the normal din, I registered each resounding thwomp! as cleats met ball.Below a parenthesis-shaped moon, a chorus of cicadas thrummed along with the shouts of the players calling to each other under the floodlights.And when the fans applauded a goal or great save, it gave the match the feel of a symphony concert, with the audience clapping between movements.Japan, where the virus has been a persistent presence since January but has never flared out of control as it did in the United States and Europe, is welcoming fans to stadiums as part of an effort to keep its economy running.The country has not resorted to locking down society to suppress the virus, and a national emergency declared in April largely depended on voluntary compliance. Even in recent weeks, when Japan reported more than 1,000 new infections on some days, there has been no move toward a shutdown.Business leaders coined the slogan “with corona” to describe their philosophy of reducing risk while living with the virus. Both the Tokyo governor, Yuriko Koike, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe popularized the phrase as a guiding principle for the country’s coronavirus response.ImageAt live matches at Ajinomoto Stadium in Tokyo, the “away” side stands are left entirely empty.As part of the bargain, the public is asked to adhere to strict rules. In general, people comply.Most wear masks as a matter of course and spritz liberally from the bottles of hand sanitizer that have cropped up everywhere. On public transit, people are asked not to speak, so as to reduce the possibility of emitting aerosolized virus particles.Late last month, Japan’s central government extended restrictions on large gatherings to no more than 5,000 people through the end of September.On my way to the FC Tokyo game with a friend — an ardent season ticket holder — and his daughter, almost nobody else spoke on the sparsely filled train, their noses buried in their phones or an occasional book. (In fairness, this is pretty normal behavior for Japanese commuters.)At the stadium, everyone submitted to an infrared thermometer scan at the admission gates. Markings on the ground kept fans at a social distance as they lined up to buy food or souvenirs.In the stands, every other row remained empty, with two seats left vacant on either side of each ticket holder. Even family members could not sit side by side. Half the stadium — the entire “away” section — sat unoccupied. During the game, the spectators all remained in their seats.ImageAt concession stands, markings on the ground ensure that customers stand apart. Ticket buyers had been asked to submit their names and contact information so that contact tracers could track them down if there was a coronavirus case at the stadium, although according to the soccer league, no spectators have yet been infected at matches since they reopened.Katsutoshi Ito, a loyal fan who has attended most home games since 2011, said he felt safer in the stadium than at a bar or restaurant. On the empty seats in front of him, he draped team scarfs and towels, as well as two stuffed raccoon dogs — the FC Tokyo mascot — one wearing a tiny white cloth mask.For die-hard fans, the toughest changes are the prohibitions on the chanting, singing and flag waving they love to do.“It’s because we are all human,” said Shoji Fujimura, a general manager in the J-league’s coronavirus response office who helped develop the spectator rules along with public health experts and officials from Japan’s baseball league, which has also staged games for a limited number of spectators.“Waving a flag or drumming can get people excited,” Mr. Fujimura added. “And this can cause others to gather, which can lead to everybody raising their voices.”ImageEvery other row is left empty and each spectator is separated by two seats.The same goes for alcohol, which is also banned.On the night I attended, the fans sometimes could not refrain from shouting cheers of victory for the goals or groaning audibly at missed chances. At one point, I heard an errant fan warning a defender about a forward from the opposing team: “He’s getting close, he’s getting close!” Occasionally, I heard other spectators exhorting a striker to “shoot! shoot!”But for the most part, the only noise from the stands was intermittent clapping. During the broadcast of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” FC Tokyo’s theme song, the supporters — who would normally be belting out the lyrics — silently held team scarves aloft, some waving light sticks.“Everyone knows we need to protect everyone else,” said Kiyomi Muramatsu, who has been a supporter since 2000 and said her four children grew up watching matches from the stands.“We also don’t want to cause any trouble for FC Tokyo,” Ms. Muramatsu said, “or go back to a situation where no spectators are allowed in.”ImageA shop at the stadium.FC Tokyo’s coach, Kenta Hasegawa, said the occasional burst of applause was better than nothing. “Although they are not cheering for us with their voices and by making noises, all of that excitement is included in their claps,” he said.One J-League team, Sagan Tosu, based in Kyushu, had to suspend games in August after 12 players and staff members, including the coach, tested positive for the coronavirus.Kentaro Iwata, an infectious disease specialist at Kobe University Hospital, said that if the incidence of infections remained low in Japan and spectators followed social distancing rules and avoided hugging or high-fives, “I would say the current measures are acceptable, at least for now.”But Dr. Iwata said that while the open-air stadium was relatively safe, the ride on trains or buses to the events, or instances where maskless fans talk to each other, could pose larger risks.Some fans have been asked to stay away. Sumie Tanaka, 65, who has attended FC Tokyo matches for 15 years as a family affair, said her son’s employer had barred him from participating in large events.ImageCoronavirus protocols for spectators at live soccer matches in Tokyo.“He is going into work every day,” Ms. Tanaka said. “He knows that if he comes to the games and gets infected, it will be bad.”The soccer league did loosen one of the rules that had been in effect; spectators can now clap rhythmically.“After watching a few matches, we observed that rhythmic clapping inevitably occurred,” said Kei Takahashi, the administrative manager of FC Tokyo. “But it would not lead to extra excitement and raised voices.”At the Sunday match, Noriyuki Yamagami, a season-ticket holder, tried to overcome the dearth of spectators by placing cardboard cutouts clothed in team jerseys on the seats flanking him.Wary of any exposure to the virus, he lashed a bandanna over his surgical mask for extra protection and said he was currently eating separately from his family at home as a precaution.But he said he just couldn’t stay away.“When I was watching the games on a screen, I just wanted to come to feel the air, have the smells, hear the sounds,” Mr. Yamagami said. “It’s not like it was before, but I just had that feeling of wanting to be here.”Hikari Hida contributed research. 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    Barcelona Members Race Clock in Effort to Oust Bartomeu

    A group of F.C. Barcelona members that has spent months mobilizing, planning and plotting to force out the club’s unpopular president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, is using the soccer team’s latest crisis to begin an official campaign to force a change in leadership.The effort’s biggest opponent is not Bartomeu, though, but rather a ticking clock, restrictions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and the club’s own byzantine rules: To force a no-confidence vote in the board, the organizers first must collect the handwritten signatures of portion of the club’s 140,000 members who are eligible to vote — about 16,500 people. And they must do it in the next nine days.“We have to go door to door,” said Marc Duch, one of the Barcelona members behind the campaign. “This Covid thing is a massive issue at the moment.”Discussions that had been taking place for months, he said, suddenly gathered pace in recent weeks. Already furious about months of boardroom infighting and angry about a humiliating exit from the Champions League, the organizers of the campaign said Lionel Messi’s announcement that he wanted out of Barcelona — a plan Messi has since abandoned — was the last straw.“That sped things up,” Duch said.Removing a board that has been duly elected is no easy task, though. According to Barcelona’s bylaws, a vote of no confidence can only be called if 15 percent of the club’s eligible voters — people who have been members for more than a year — provide handwritten signatures on official forms provided by the club within two weeks. (The forms must be accompanied by a photocopy of the front and back of each signer’s national identification card.) And that’s just to get the vote. To pass, the motion requires approval by a two-thirds majority.Those rules, coupled with coronavirus-related restrictions, have set the scene for a race against time for Bartomeu’s opponents, a disparate alliance of fan groups that also has the support of three men who have said they would stand as candidates in the next election for club president. Bartomeu’s current term runs through next spring.To officially launch their campaign, Duch, a tax adviser by profession, and a handful of other members arrived at the team’s headquarters last Wednesday. There they were provided with boxes upon boxes of the required forms — 32,000 in total — that they loaded into cars and vans.That was the easy part.In normal circumstances, getting the forms in front of the team’s members would require little more than stationing volunteers outside the club’s Camp Nou stadium on match days and handing them out. But with the team currently in a brief off-season, and social distancing rules limiting gatherings to fewer than 10 people, collecting the thousands of signatures by next week’s deadline has been a complex logistical conundrum from the start.To spread the word, batches of forms have been left at more than 130 office blocks, restaurants and other businesses around Catalonia. The group also posted locations where Barcelona members can pick up a form on a website, and it continues to try to spread the word on social media. So far, Duch and others said, they have gathered 7,500 signatures.Barcelona declined to comment on the effort, but at least one of Bartomeu’s rivals does not appear to oppose it.“I thought the defeat in Lisbon was the bottom, but the bottom-bottom was having the best player in the history of the sport, who has been 20 years in the club, wanting to leave after such a defeat and through the back door,” said Victor Font, a technology entrepreneur and one of the front-runners in the race to replace Bartomeu.Bartomeu can remain in charge until the middle of next year, but, according to Font, changes needs to come much faster than that, not least because the risk of losing Messi next year remains a strong possibility. Messi can speak with potential suitors — Manchester City is among those that have reportedly expressed interest — and even sign a precontract agreement as soon as Jan. 1.Should Bartomeu’s opponents succeed in ousting the current leadership, elections would have to take place within three months. Whoever is in charge, however, will face a bulging inbox of immediate issues beyond the fate of Messi.Key sponsorship agreements — including with the team’s principal sponsor Rakuten — will be up for renewal; a contentious and hugely expensive stadium refurbishment will need to be addressed; and, perhaps most important for the team’s fans, the roster will need to be rebuilt. But so will the club’s battered image.“They have ruined it all, in economic terms, sporting terms and institutionally we have lost all Europe’s respect as a club,” Duch said.Bloodlettings are not rare at Barcelona. Allies of Bartomeu once almost succeeded in ousting a former president, Joan Laporta, in 2008. Laporta narrowly survived, and went on to lay the foundations for much of the team’s current success by naming a largely untested former player, Pep Guardiola, as coach. Under Guardiola, with Messi leading on the field, Barcelona went on to enjoy a decade of unparalleled success.Bartomeu took over in 2014, stepping up from a vice president role after his ally Sandro Rosell was forced to step down amid claims of improper conduct in the signing of the Brazilian forward Neymar.But the tide against Bartomeu’s control of the 120-year-old club has been rising for months. Last week, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that the police in Catalonia were investigating Bartomeu for corruption.Duch said eight groups had come together to push for Bartomeu’s ouster. But with only days to go, the campaign is entering its most difficult stage: Persuading older Barcelona members — unaware of an effort that to date has largely played out on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter — to add their names to the effort. More

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    A Son’s Future, a Father’s Final Down

    BEFORE THE EVER AFTERBy Jacqueline WoodsonZachariah Johnson Jr. (ZJ) is living a 12-year-old boy’s dream: His father is a star professional football player, he lives in a comfortable home in the suburbs with a half basketball court upstairs, he has a trio of friends who always show up at the right times and his budding songwriting talent seems destined to take him far.He is also living a nightmare.Jacqueline Woodson’s new novel, “Before the Ever After,” is not a work of horror (despite the haunting title), but a creeping, invisible force is upending ZJ’s world and slowly stealing away his father — known as “Zachariah 44,” for his jersey number — before his and his mother’s eyes.The father’s hands have begun to tremble uncontrollably. He stares vacantly. He forgets basic things, most achingly the name of the son who bears, and at times is burdened by, his name. He’s prone to angry outbursts, to the point that ZJ’s friends no longer want to come by the house.He is suffering the effects of a degenerative brain disease that, while not named, bears a strong resemblance to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which has been found in scores of former N.F.L. players. Until 2016, the league for years denied any connection between brain trauma on the field and hundreds of players’ crippling neurological ailments and, in many cases, deaths.“My dad probably holds the Football Hall of Fame record for the most concussions,” ZJ says, relating how his mother has grown bitter about the game. “Even with a helmet on.”Although you can envision fretful parents handing this book to young boys eager to play, it’s not a stern lecture. It’s an elegiac meditation on loss and longing told, like Woodson’s seminal memoir, “Brown Girl Dreaming,” mostly in verse.This approach, and Woodson’s evocative language (“the night is so dark, it looks like a black wall”), helps pull us through the foreboding and gives us much to contemplate; leitmotifs such as trees and song deepen the story and provoke reflection on childhood, change and remembrance.The story is set in 1999-2000, when the cost of brain injury in the sport was just starting to come to light. The uncertainty over what has happened, and what might be coming, bewilders ZJ and his mother.“Sitting there with my mom and my dad snoring on the couch and the doctors knowing but not knowing,” he says, “I feel like someone’s holding us, keeping us from getting back to where we were before and keeping us from the next place too.”This is largely a father-son tale, leaving ZJ’s mother in the background, revealed in the occasional tender scene — Zachariah 44 drapes his arms around her in a moment of clarity — but mostly in quiet anguish.“I think they’re not telling the whole truth,” ZJ overhears his mother telling a friend. “Too many of them —”ZJ is so disillusioned that he gives away one of his father’s coveted footballs to his friend Everett, in a scene that reminds us of the staying power of the sport: “Everett’s eyes get wide. This is Zachariah 44’s ball? I nod. For real?”ZJ finds solace in the music, literal and symbolic, that he and his father have made together. “Until the doctors figure out what’s wrong, this is what I have for him,” ZJ says. “My music, our songs.”Woodson has said she seeks to instill optimism and hope. ZJ’s patient and supportive mother and his group of friends who are always buoying him up serve that purpose here. Yet at times this striving for hope feels strained, given a condition that so often offers no Hail Mary. ZJ may not fully realize it, but we all know what’s coming. The nightmarish, seemingly irreversible decline of the once mighty and strong has broken the hearts and wills of football families. A lyrical portrayal of a player’s fade and a boy coming to terms with it doesn’t change that. More

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    In a Reversal, Lionel Messi Says He Will Stay With Barcelona

    Lionel Messi is still angry with Barcelona. He is still frustrated with Barcelona. But, in a sudden and dramatic reversal, he said Friday that he is not prepared to go to war with Barcelona and, so, will stay after all.In a decision he announced in an interview with the website Goal, Messi said he had withdrawn a letter announcing his intention to leave Barcelona and would stay with the soccer club that he has called home for his entire professional career.The decision is an abrupt about-face for Messi, who on Aug. 25 informed the club in writing that he would exercise a clause in his contract that allowed him to leave the club unilaterally. It also spares the team the embarrassment of losing its most beloved, and most valuable, asset without receiving a transfer fee.But it may do little to resolve months of turmoil at Barcelona, a downward spiral that has involved coaching changes, boardroom intrigue and public bickering. The club reached a nadir with a humbling 8-2 defeat at the hands of the German champion Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals of the Champions League last month.The announcement that he would stay came hours after Messi’s father and agent, Jorge, had appeared to double down on the player’s stated intention to leave, and after the Spanish league had declared a €700 million release clause in Messi’s contract was valid. That set the stage for an ugly legal fight between the player and the club, and Messi, in his interview with Goal, appeared to back away rather than face Barcelona in court.“I would never go to war against the club of my life,” Messi said.But the manner of Messi’s decision and the contentious language he used even as he confirmed his decision to stay at Barcelona piles yet more pressure on the club’s embattled president Josep Maria Bartomeu. Messi said Bartomeu, already under pressure because of a spate of ugly boardroom dramas, reneged on a promise to let him leave at the end of last season.“I wasn’t happy and I wanted to leave,” Messi said in the Goal interview. “I have not been allowed this in any way and I will stay at the club so as not to get into a legal dispute. The management of the club led by Bartomeu is a disaster.”He added: “I thought and was sure that I was free to leave; the president always said that at the end of the season I could decide if I stayed or not. Now they cling to the fact that I did not say it before June 10, when it turns out that on June 10 we were competing for La Liga in the middle of this awful coronavirus and this disease altered all the season.”It is not the first time Messi has reversed course. The forward caused hysteria in his homeland in 2016 when he quit the national team, citing his frustration with the federation. But less than two months later, amid pleas from teammates, fans and even the country’s president, Messi changed his mind.In the current situation, Barcelona and Messi had agreed upon a clause that would allow him to walk away without commanding a transfer fee as long as he communicated his desire to leave before the end of the season. But the havoc wrought on the soccer schedule by the pandemic meant the Spanish season did not finish until months after the date stipulated in the agreement. Messi complained that Bartomeu did not keep to the spirit of the accord and insisted Messi stay unless suitors pay the full buyout clause, which Messi called “impossible.”Messi said that given his relationship with the club and its supporters he could not continence the idea of pursuing a damaging lawsuit to force his way out of the club. Instead, he will remain to help pick up the pieces as Barcelona prepares to rebuild itself after a catastrophic year on and off the field.A new coach, Ronald Koeman, has already been hired and several senior players, including Messi’s close friend Luis Suárez, have been told they have no future at the Camp Nou.Koeman, appointed in the wake of the humbling against Bayern, had spoken to Messi shortly before the player stunned the club by announcing his intention to leave. News reports in Spain at the time suggested that the new Dutch coach, a former player with Barcelona, had warned Messi that he would no longer receive special treatment — a threat, it was suggested, that made Messi more determined to leave.Instead the two will have to form an uneasy alliance for at least a year and try to shake Barcelona out of a slump that had been building in recent seasons. The surrender to the German champion came after similar capitulations in the Champions League against Roma and Liverpool in recent seasons. Messi said those failures drove his decision to seek a new challenge in the final years of his career. Messi was 28 when the team won its last European Cup.“I looked further afield and I want to compete at the highest level, win titles, compete in the Champions League. You can win or lose in it, because it is very difficult, but you have to compete,” he said.There was growing speculation that Messi would be joining Manchester City, backed by the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi, the English team — managed by Messi’s old mentor, Pep Guardiola — is one of few in world soccer that could both afford to hire Messi and provide him with the platform for the success he still craves. But for all the talk of an exit, Messi’s inextricable link to Barcelona meant a departure, whatever the circumstances, would have been shocking.Messi has been with the team for 20 years, since he moved there as a 13-year-old from Argentina.His rise, in that time, has mirrored that of his club. Messi’s list of honors extends to 10 Spanish championships, four Champions League trophies and six world player of the year awards. His tally of individual records, if anything, is more remarkable.He has scored more goals than anyone else in La Liga history, and holds the assist record, too. He has won more Ballons d’Or — the trophy awarded annually to the world’s best player — than anyone else, played in more victories than any other Barcelona player, scored more hat-tricks and doubles than anyone else.As Messi developed first into the best player of his generation and then, possibly, into the best in history, so Barcelona was transformed into arguably the most popular sports team in the world. For almost a decade, the club represented soccer’s gold standard.But as many of the stars — such as Xavi, Iniesta and Puyol — that lined up alongside Messi during that glorious run started to age and eventually moved on or retired, the club made a series of errors, seemingly spending more and more money on talent while getting weaker season upon season. The club is now left counting the cost of those errors, and in Messi has a star player who is a prisoner of his gilded contract. More