As a boyhood Barcelona fan and Monaco man Cesc Fàbregas has ample reason to fear the ramifications of Lionel Messi’s seismic shift to Paris Saint-Germain. The ripple effects of Messi’s every move, however, are not lost on a friend and former teammate still processing the astonishing events of the past seven days.
“For France and Ligue 1 this is another dimension,” admits Fàbregas, who was 13 when he first encountered the great Argentinian trialling for Barcelona. Their friendship survives 21 years on.
“Sometimes I tell Leo he doesn’t know how big he is. He goes to places and thinks the reaction is normal because he has been raised being the best and has been always surrounded by fans. But when you see it from the outside it is something I’ve not seen around anyone else. Sometimes there are more followers of Leo as a person than for a single club. A lot of people now will be following Ligue 1, especially with Leo there. The three of them, with Neymar and [Kylian] Mbappé there, will be fantastic to watch.”
The reaction to Messi’s arrival in Paris has been surprisingly enthusiastic inside the Monaco dressing room too. Niko Kovac’s young team finished third in Ligue 1 last season, one place and four points behind their Qatar-funded rivals from the capital, and while their chances of closing the gap may have suffered their motivation to do so has only increased.
Fàbregas, an elder statesman of the team at 34, says: “All the boys are super-excited. For some, they were only dreaming of this and now they have a lot of enthusiasm knowing they will be playing against Lionel Messi. Most of them are French kids – maybe Monaco fans or PSG fans from Paris when they were little – and they cannot believe that Leo is playing for PSG. Everyone wants his shirt. They all want me to ask him already to keep a shirt for them when we play each other in mid-December. I’ve told them he probably has two and we are 25 [players] so I don’t know how to do that.
“But it’s nice to see the excitement and the will – they want to compete against the very best and show their talents. This Monaco team is full of young talent right now and it will be a big test for them. They know that and I think this excitement will be a good thing for them to be motivated throughout the season. When the right time comes to play against the best player in the world they can show what they can do.”
The former Arsenal, Barcelona and Chelsea midfielder is in the final year of his contract and does not buy the argument that, with Messi, Sergio Ramos, Gianluigi Donnarumma and others on board at PSG this summer, his last season with the club will be spent chasing their shadow. With Lille winning Ligue 1 last season, Marseille improving and Monaco developing, Fàbregas believes there will be external as well as internal pressure on PSG, for whom a first Champions League triumph is now a must.
“When PSG don’t win the league everyone sees it as a disaster because they spend a lot of money,” he says. “Everyone takes it that this is a one-team league but in the last five years they’ve won three because Lille and Monaco have also won the title and put the brakes on their winning streak. It is a competitive league. It is not as easy as people think. It’s very aggressive, very intensive, very fast with strong players who defend very well.
“I’m sure as a coach [Mauricio] Pochettino prefers to have a fantastic squad with a lot of pressure on himself knowing he needs to win than the other way around. They must have pressure when they create a super team like that. It’s obvious they want to win the Champions League.
“They’ve been trying to catch it for a very long time and it seems like this is the last push – like, there is nothing better than Lionel Messi, there is no better defender than Ramos, [Georginio] Wijnaldum is one of the best midfielders at the moment, [Achraf] Hakimi is one of the best right-backs in Europe. It feels like they are doing the little extra final push to see where it takes them. We will see.
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“Football these days is very competitive. The line is so thin between winning and losing, more than ever I would say. That’s why there are so many 0-0s, 1-1s, extra times and penalties. It’s all penalties nowadays because all the coaches study each other and all the teams know each other very well.
“Football is about competing and having the passion to do well. Football is about having the dream and the enthusiasm to always be better than the rest. Is it going to be possible? We don’t know. But we have to try.”
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