{"id":10099,"date":"2020-09-08T16:51:28","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T11:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/?p=44005"},"modified":"2020-09-08T16:51:28","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T11:21:28","slug":"lionel-messi-back-training-with-barcelona-after-ending-departure-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/football\/lionel-messi-back-training-with-barcelona-after-ending-departure-saga\/","title":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi back training with Barcelona after ending departure saga"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lionel Messi returned to training with Barcelona on Monday for the first time since requesting to leave the club last month. After reluctantly making a U-turn on his decision, the captain of the esteemed La Liga side was back with the team to prepare for the new season under new manager Ronald Koeman.<\/p>\n<p>Messi practiced separately from the rest of the squad at the Joan Gamper training ground because he still has to undergo a second COVID-19 test. After failing to turn up to the club\u2019s tests for COVID-19 eight days ago, the 33-year-old took a test for the same at his home on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Initially, the Argentine claimed in an official letter on August 25 that he was free to leave the club unilaterally and without a transfer fee owing to a clause. Last Friday, Messi revealed in an interview with\u00a0Goal\u00a0that he was staying at Barcelona for the coming season as he did not wish to face a court battle with \u201cthe club of his life\u201d.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The GOAT Lionel Messi's return! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/RfGbWvCn0K\">pic.twitter.com\/RfGbWvCn0K<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Football Daily (@footballdaily) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/footballdaily\/status\/1303005571315126273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 7, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Barcelona, who will be looking to reclaim the La Liga title after surrendering it to Real Madrid last season, is sitting out the first two weeks of the new campaign which begins on Friday due to reaching the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals.<\/p>\n<p>But Barcelona and La Liga responded by saying the limitation was no longer valid and that the only way to free him from his contract was by paying a release clause of \u20ac700 million.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Leo Messi returns to Barca training for the first time since asking to leave the club \ud83d\udcf8 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/oqxdBr0rJ2\">pic.twitter.com\/oqxdBr0rJ2<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 B\/R Football (@brfootball) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/brfootball\/status\/1302972639586258944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 7, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Koeman\u2019s side will instead play pre-season friendlies against Gimnastic de Tarragona on September 12 and Girona on September 16 before their first league game at home to Villarreal on September 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lionel Messi returned to training with Barcelona on Monday for the first time since requesting to leave the club last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":32607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[681,661,238,487,239,662],"class_list":["post-10099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-barca","tag-barcelona","tag-fc-barcelona","tag-lionel-messi","tag-messi","tag-messi-transfer"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}