Lionel Messi Was Reportedly Target of Massive Summer Bid from Chelsea

Chelsea were one of the more ambitious clubs this summer, adding superstars like Diego Costa and Cesc Fabregas, among others. But it turns out we may not have been aware of just how ambitous the club really were.  

Because according to reports, Chelsea tried to make a move for Lionel Messi, which in world football today is as ambitious as you can possibly be. Alex Harris of the Express has more:

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Chelsea launched a stunning £118m (€150m) bid to buy Lionel Messi from Barcelona during the summer transfer window.

According to reports in Catalonia, the Blues submitted the cheeky bid for Messi due to his strained relations with the Barcelona board following last season's frustrating campaign which saw some of the club's fans criticise him for below-part performances. 

Catalan channel TV3 aired a programme called Efectivament revealing that Jose Mourinho wanted to exploit Messi's then uncertain situation and persuaded owner Roman Abramovich to make an offer to the Catalan club. 

However, neither Barcelona top brass or the 27-year-old were interested in the deal crushing Mourinho's faint hopes. 

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The combination of Lionel Messi and Mourinho—a player who seemingly thrives in a system the manager doesn't employ—would have been fascinating, if nothing else. Would Mourinho have granted Messi the freedom to roam and create and ignore most defensive responsibilities, or would he have tried to mold him into the system he wanted to run?

Of course, Chelsea have been far more attack-minded this season than they were in Mourinho's first year of his second stint, and why not? When you have Costa, Fabregas and Eden Hazard, among other technically savvy footballers, you can afford to attack liberally. 

Mourinho has certainly been pleased with his new attacking pair. Earlier in the month he noted that "I think now everybody knows Chelsea did the right thing waiting for [Costa]" when talking about the team's search for a forward, while also saying, "To play with Fabregas is the dream of every striker." 

So perhaps missing out on Messi wasn't the worst thing that happened. Chelsea certainly got a pretty promising alternative in Costa and Fabregas.

And you don't pay an obscene amount of money to land a player like Messi and then expect him to be someone he's not. On the other hand, even if Messi was asked to tweak his game slightly, he's certainly shown an ability to be a playmaker as well as a goalscorer. Check out this stat from OptaJose:

Very impressive.

It's pretty hard to imagine Messi ever leaving Barcelona. He's played there his whole career, he's seemingly comfortable (and beloved) there, it's rare another club will be able to surround him with as much talent as he'll get at Barca, and, oh yeah, it will take an enormous sum of money to pry him away. 

Maybe one day down the line he'll depart Spain for a top English team or a squad like Bayern Munich. But even with reports surfacing that one such club made a bid this summer, it's hard to imagine the world's top player ever donning anything other than a Barca kit.