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BARCELONA. — Lionel Messi has had enough.
What tipped him over the edge was not Real Madrid winning their 34th La Liga title, it was Barcelona handing it to them.
“We didn’t want it to end like this but it represents how the season has gone,” Messi said after a 1-2 home defeat to Osasuna on Thursday.
‘‘We were a very erratic, very weak, low-intensity team . . . We lost a lot of points and this game is a summary of the season.
“We have to be self-critical, starting with the players but also across the entire club. We are Barca and we have to win everything. We can’t look at Madrid . . . Madrid have done their job, but we have helped them a lot.
“If we want to win the Champions League, we have to change a lot. If we continue like this, we will lose the game against Napoli.”
Messi has done his bit; 23 goals and 21 assists in the league demonstrate that, but too often it has been left to him to try to keep Barca’s title challenge on track while the club was going off the rails.
Thursday’s train wreck was inevitable.
The coaching change in January — Ernesto Valverde out and Quique Setien in — has not worked out.
Nor have so many of this season’s transfers.
Frenkie de Jong is a qualified success for now and will do better in the future but look elsewhere — Antoine Griezmann, Martin Braithwaite, Junior Firpo and so on — and the scale of Barca’s failure to build a proper team around Messi becomes apparent. — Goal.com
Online Reporter