Lionel Messi Situation Underlines Barcelona's Mixed Messages from the Top

Barcelona officials will be delighted by the form of the first team at present.

More so because the positive results conveniently shift the focus from the confusion that appears to reign at the very top level of the club.

Smooth and unruffled on the surface but furiously paddling underneath, the duck analogy seems a perfectly apt way of describing the goings on in the corridors of power at Camp Nou at present.

Manu Fernandez/Associated Press

Take the mixed messages coming out of the club concerning Lionel Messi as the prime example.

Josep Maria Bartomeu has been quoted on more than one occasion as saying Messi is not for sale. The statements were definitive.

Per an interview with Catalan radio station RAC1, detailed by Barcelona's official website, the president noted: "Messi is not for sale. We want to sit down, without any rush, with Leo’s father—it’s not something that’s happening tomorrow, we have plenty of time, but we will do what we have to to ensure he’s the best paid player."

Contrast that with the comments of new international sporting director Ariedo Braida to TV channel Esport3, via Sporting Life:

"

I believe it's very difficult that Messi will leave Barca but at times in football strange things happen.

Now with these clubs that have so much money like Manchester City, certain amounts don't seem to have a value.

In football things happen that appear impossible but I hope he will remain.

"

Taken at face value, Braida's comments hint at the possibility of a sale, yet Bartomeu will not countenance the same. Do we therefore have a situation where the left hand isn't talking to the right at this once great institution?

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B/R's Guillem Balague, a man with his finger on the pulse at the club, noted in this week's Sky Sports "Revista de La Liga" show: "Barcelona are losing their essence, identity, there is a lack of leadership."

Given that we are just a few months away from club elections, strong and clear leadership is precisely what the club need.

Balague goes even further and calls into question the entire modus operandi at the club:

"

If you go through what Barcelona have been saying they are for 40, 50 years, it’s all failing, and it’s all failing big time.

What is the club’s philosophy? The academy. Well, the academy is developing the kind of players the first team doesn’t need anymore. Because the first team is changing its style.

What else are they? More than a club. They have Qatar on their shirt, is that more than a club?

Barcelona were at the forefront of offensive football, and now actually they become any other club. A club that goes through quick transitions, quick attacks, it could be any team, it could be Real Madrid, anybody.

So all that is guaranteed of titles, for sure, and the cup, but it doesn’t make them more than a club, or a different club, it goes against their philosophy.

It’s not evolution, it’s change of a style of a team that is now happier with attacking fast. That is not special.

"

Club officials and supporters have always taken great pride in the fact that Barca did things a little differently. Strip away that facade, however, and as Balague says, what do Barca have left to make them stand out from the rest?

Look at both the shirt-sponsorship issue and the Neymar transfer deal as evidence of Balague being right on the money.

Brooks Peck of Yahoo was one to mention the slightly underhand way the club went about getting Qatar Airways on the shirt: "The shirt sponsorship bait and switch pulled by the Qatar Sports Investment and FC Barcelona is finally complete as Qatar Airways becomes the new shirt sponsor of the club that used to famously shun corporate shirt sponsors to benefit charitable organisations."

It left a sour taste in the mouth, perhaps more so because the supporters were misled at the beginning of the deal.

They were misled again when the signing of Neymar was completed, and only the persistence of one socio member saw the truth come out.

Alberto Saiz/Associated Press

Braida now appears to be at odds with his paymasters over Messi, but is this actually another attempt at a smokescreen, paving the way for an eventual Messi transfer? Misleading the fans again, hiding the truth in rhetoric and then attempting to assuage the masses once the deal is done?

We can't really say with 100 percent certainty that this won’t be the case.

In any event, it's about time Bartomeu pulled his staff into line and had them singing from the same hymn sheet. Getting his house in order before it becomes a house of cards.