Lionel Messi Scores an Impressive Brace in Pre-season Friendly Against Girona to Put his Contract Saga Decisively Behind Him

Any thoughts of Lionel Messi's mind being elsewhere this season rather than Barcelona, after making his remarks to remain in Barcelona this season, have been proven to quelled after scoring a brilliant brace against Girona in a pre-season friendly match yesterday.

A few weeks back, Messi pressed hard for a transfer to Manchester City, which would have been a reunion with Pep Guardiola his old boss in Barcelona, just for the club management and LaLiga authority to stand ground on his £630m release clause which made it difficult for any club side to achieve.  

After struggling to make a move which didn’t work out for him, he made a sound remark to stay for the season, also retaining his leadership as a captain in the squad and on Wednesday night he has proven not to be distracted at all on the pitch with two impressive strikes from outside the box at the Johan Cruyff Stadium against Girona.

Messi's transfer and contract saga with Barcelona club sent anxieties through the world of sport as he demanded a transfer to leave the club not minding leaving his legendary behind.

That didn't come to pass and keeping in mind that he at first had boycotted pre-season test for COVID-19 and afterwards training to put more pressure on his transfer demand. meanwhile, the club stands their ground on release clause fee and Messi inevitably yielded he would influence positively in Ronald Koeman's time in control this season.

Furthermore, he had returned to his old courses in Barcelona's second pre-season friendly match with a brilliant performance.

Philippe Coutinho made a return from loan to score his second goals of the pre-season after Messi produced a brilliant pass to pick out Trincao who assisted in pulling it back for Coutinho to easily tap-in the ball into the net.

Afterwards, it was Messi who took over the game. His first goal was a brilliant finish from individual skill.

Messi received the ball 25 yards outside the box, dropped his shoulder to let the ball run across to his right foot and he fired into the far corner, hitting the goal post to score with his right foot.

Messi second goal had a level of fortune connected to it with a significant diversion which helped his left-footed strike trick the Girona goalkeeper who was left stranded following the deflected shot.

After 100 minutes of play, Koeman substituted him with Ousmane Dembele, and the pair shook hands as Messi got back to the seat, this an unmistakable sign the connection between them is defrosting.

It was a night covered with positives for Koeman, with Trincao, Coutinho and Messi all intriguing in the forward line.

There will be mellow aggravation from the way that Girona scored inside 60 seconds of the second half after midfielder Samuel Saiz was given considerably an excessive amount of time to score past Neto.

Yet, besides a fixation mistake at the restart of the game after the halftime break, it was the ideal groundwork for Messi and the remainder of the team as consideration going into their last pre-season game against Elche.

Their LaLiga season campaign set to start by September 27 at Camp Noun against Villarreal side who are recently been managed by Unai Emery's the former PSG and Arsenal manager