FC Barcelona

By Muhammad Sulaiman

Spanish football prodigy Lamine Yamal is set to make history as the first player in the Spain national team to observe fasting during Ramadan while on international duty.

According to reports, the 16-year-old winger has chosen to fast as a mark of respect for his family’s Muslim traditions.

Despite his young age, Yamal has already made headlines as one of the most promising talents in European football, and his commitment to both his faith and his career has drawn admiration from fans.

The Barcelona star’s decision highlights the growing diversity within Spanish football, as well as the increasing visibility of Muslim athletes who balance professional sports with religious observances.

Spain’s coaching staff is expected to accommodate Yamal’s needs during the fasting period, as has been the case with Muslim players in other top European teams.

Ramadan, the holiest month in Islam, involves fasting from dawn to sunset, posing a unique challenge for athletes. However, many Muslim footballers have successfully managed their performance during the holy month.

Yamal’s choice to fast reflects not only his personal devotion but also the broader cultural representation within Spain’s national squad.

By Muhammadu Sabiu 

Recently, Barcelona president Joan Laporta insisted that it was best to allow Lionel Messi to depart the team.

Recall Messi ended his 21-year at Barcelona in 2021 when he departed Camp Nou.

Following the termination of his contract, the Argentina captain left Barcelona as a free agent.

Messi’s sad departure from the Catalan giants was prompted by a dire financial crisis the team was experiencing.

According to Goal, Barca’s president said, “I had to put Barca ahead of the greatest player in football history.

“In those moments of financial ruin, I could not retain him. I think it was the best for the club. Right now, he is a PSG player, and I prefer not to talk about him.”

By Muhammadu Sabiu

After losing 1-0 to Inter Milan on Tuesday, Barcelona is in danger of not making it out of their Champions League group.

They now have three points from three games as a result of the outcome.

At the San Siro stadium, Hakan Calhanoglu scored the game’s lone goal to give Inter all three points.

Bayern Munich leads the group with a perfect nine points after defeating Barcelona 2-0 in the most recent round of games.

With six points, Inter is in second place, ahead of Barca, as there is still no point for Viktoria Plzen.

Next week’s matchup between Inter and Barcelona will take place at Camp Nou.

Barcelona have also gone five games in a row in the Champions League without scoring.

By Aliyu Yakubu Yusuf

The group stages have come and gone at the ongoing AFCON in Cameroon, with Algeria and Ghana being the biggest casualties. For the 2-time winners Algeria, it was nothing short of a travesty that they failed to qualify from their pool. After all, they were on a 33 game unbeaten streak before the tournament. They were also odds-on favourite to go all the way. And to be fair, they crafted more than enough chances to win their opening two games against Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea before they met their waterloo against Ivory Coast. But unfortunately, their tournament can best be summarized as a combination of poor finishing, complacency and rotten luck.

As for the 4-time champions Ghana, the least said, the better. They played some of the most dreadful football in the tournament. Add this to their ill-discipline, and you have the Ghanaians knocked out in the first hurdle. That they couldn’t defeat the debutant Comoros is a damning indictment of the once-proud footballing nation.

Now that the group stages are over, the margin for errors is entirely gone. Our own Super Eagles have been the team of the tournament so far, but that counts for nothing if we fail to get the job done in the subsequent tournament rounds. Our reward for winning three out of three games is a tantalizing tie against former champions Tunisia, who have largely underwhelmed in the tournament. On the evidence of what has been seen so far, bookmakers would have Nigeria as the firm favourite to advance to the quarter-finals; and rightly so. However, I earnestly pray that our fantastic showing does not get our players and coaching staff complacent. The winner takes all nature of knockout rounds makes it an unforgiving business. It only takes an avoidable error by a player or a coach for a team to book the next flight home. Besides, the Tunisians are no pushovers. On the contrary, they have the experience and the pedigree to cause an upset.

Often, a team performs wonderfully at the group stages only to be undone by their heralded opponents. I always remember the 2002/2003 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals in which Juventus sent Barcelona parking. At the time, Barcelona got 16 points from the second group and had won a total of 11 out of 12 group stage games (there were two group stages then, in case you were wondering), and Juventus managed to crawl their way out of the second group with 7 points. When they were paired against Barcelona, many football fans and pundits regarded it as a foregone conclusion. Against all odds, Juventus not only defeated the seemingly unbeatable Barca, but they went all the way to the final, where AC Milan narrowly defeated them via penalty shootouts. The biggest lesson I have learned from that encounter is that as long as a team is still standing, it stands a chance to win a tournament. I hope our players think the same way.

The round of 16 fixtures has drawn up the path to the trophy, with Nigeria, Senegal, Mali and Tunisia as the biggest teams on the same half of the draw and Egypt, Morocco, Cameroon and Ivory Coast on the other half. If (not when) we overcome Tunisia, we are scheduled to play the winner of Burkina Faso and Gabon. And if we win that tie, we would be facing one of Senegal, Cape Verde, Mali and Equatorial Guinea before the final showdown at Yaoundé. So here’s wishing the Super Eagles all the good luck in the world.

Aliyu is a lecturer at the Department of English and Literary Studies, Bayero University, Kano. He can be reached via aliyuyy@gmail.com.

By Aliyu Yakubu Yusuf

By Muhsin Ibrahim

The Argentinian star’s bonus contains $PSG Fan Tokens, a cryptocurrency created by and dedicated to the club. The French League 1 club, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), signed Lionel Messi after a long, successful career at FC Barcelona.

PSG did not clarify what percentage of the deal included the chips. However, reports indicate that they received a “large number” of them. Socios.com issues the token.

According to Le Figaro, a famous French daily newspaper, fan tokens are a cryptocurrency that allows holders to vote on mostly minor decisions related to their clubs.

By Abdulrazak Iliyasu Sansani

As the most followed game in the world, football has moments that its fans don’t envision. Sometimes they do but keenly wish it never comes to pass. For Football Club Barcelona fanatics, that day came three days ago. 

For quite some years, Messi has been embroiled in a crisis with the Bartomeu led board. So naturally, this has affected the Argentine, who has come to identify and be identified with everything Barcelona. For someone who came as a child with growth deficiency, signed on a napkin, only to defy all odds, and cement his status as one of the greatest players of all time, arguably, the greatest player of all time. 

I first got to watch Messi play in FIFA under 20 World Cup, Netherland 2005, where he went on to score two penalties in the final and win the Cup against my dear country, Nigeria. From there, I knew a generational talent had emerged. Still, little did I know that that young man from Rosario would go on to win all competitions he has contested, except the FIFA World Cup, which he could still win in a trophy-laden career that has made only the great Brazilian utility player, Dani Alves to have won more titles in the history of the round leather game. 

There is every reason not to doubt this phenomenal player. If I ever had any doubts about the magical Messi, all were quelled when on March 10th 2007, aged just 19-years-old, the youngster was the star of the show in El Clasico, outshining his illustrious teammates Samuel Eto’o and Ronaldinho, to win a vital point for his team by scoring a hat-trick in club football most prominent feature, against the greatest football club in history, Real Madrid. On that day, for me, Messi proved beyond any iota of doubt that he would be one of the greats. 

With everything going on well from that point: with all his abundant talent, the right atmosphere, and everything in place. Still, Lionel Messi’s transformation from football prodigy to become one of the few players that deserve a place in the debate of the greatest players of all time, with so many claiming he is the outright GOAT, is impressive. Irrespective of your opinion in this debate: there are so many facts that concur with such views. 

Rarely has the world seen a better all-round football player who could function as a midfielder as well as a striker flawlessly. A player who often competes with the most clinical strikers for golden boots while struggling it out with the best midfield maestros for the most assists in so many seasons. Lionel Messi is out of this world. 

While you might not support him, you cannot deny the fact that what Messi does on the pitch, season in season out, for more than a decade, at the highest level, is the dream of every young footballer from my remote village of Sansani, to Jalingo, Bali, Arochukwu,  Ogbomosho, Freetown, Lome, London, Paris, New Jersey, and to all the nooks and crannies of the world. 

The home training I got abhor hatred. It absolutely doesn’t permit it. This has influenced all my activities. This is why some would be astonished to know that I am a Real Madrid football fan and writing all this for the greatest player of our biggest rivals, FC Barcelona. But I cannot hate greatness. If any player has made the difference for Barcelona in El Clasico, it is Leo. This had often been the difference between success and failure for Barcelona and Real Madrid too. 

To some, it should be a significant factor in making me antagonistic towards anything Messi. But I don’t think so. Of course, I cannot hate the defence-splitting passes, the vision, the offensive nous of bringing something out of nothing, the breathtaking dribbling, which once produced a physics-defying goal. No, I don’t do my things this way. 

I cherish greatness; I bow before the best in awe; I celebrate the mercurial Messi knowing this genius has entertained the football world to stupor. Wherever he goes, I wish him the very best. All things being equal, whichever club he goes will naturally have the edge to achieve their lofty ambitions. 

For those who will always view Messi’s greatness through warped lenses, I say to them don’t waste your precious time, the six-time Ballon d’Or winner has nothing to prove in this beautiful game that he has already broken almost every record breakable and set new ones, which for want of space I won’t list them here. However, they are well known by football supporters worldwide. 

Yes, he can’t break all the records; none can. But, of course, you are allowed to continue to raise the bar for him, and this football living legend will have a little problem proving you wrong while effortlessly doing what he loves best, playing football and winning trophies. 

Abdulrazak Iliyasu Sansani, a Real Madrid fan, wrote from Jalingo, Taraba State. He can be reached via abdulrazaksansani93@gmail.com.

When former Barcelona Director of Football, Carles Rexach, signed Lionel Messi on a napkin paper at the turn of the current millennium, little did he know that he had just unearthed possibly the greatest ever footballer. Barcelona have just announced the departure of their boy wonder, the messiah and the plea, after 17 years of joy and anguish, highs and lows, successes and failures. Countless goalscoring records have tumbled at the majestic feet of the boy from Rosario in Argentina. He holds the records for playing more games for Barça in La Liga, UCL and El Clasico.

To even attempt to list Messi’s accomplishments in this short thread would be foolhardy. Nevertheless, many accomplished pundits, coaches and players mesmerised and enchanted by his magic wand have showered plaudits to the little genius. After trouncing Arsenal in 2010, the then Arsenal coach famously remarked that “Messi is a PlayStation player”, effectively testifying to the impossibility of being Lionel Messi. Similarly, Pep Guardiola, who is the coach that helped nurture the talents of Messi, once said that “To compare Lionel Messi with any other player is unfair… on them”. Jorge Valdano, a Maradona teammate in the victorious 1986 World Cup-winning Argentina side, added that “Messi is Maradona every day and even Maradona wasn’t Maradona every day”.

Rodrigo De Paul, Messi’s teammate in the Argentina national team, said, “If Messi is your captain, you would want to go to war for him”. The recently departed ex-Real Madrid captain Sergio Ramos also confessed that “Messi will always have a place in my team”. This is just off the top of my head. The list of current and retired players who idolise Messi contains the creme-de-la-creme of the footballing world.

A longstanding mantra has it that ‘records are meant to be broken.’ If these Messi’s records are ever to be broken, it will take an exceptional player.

1. Winning four consecutive Ballon Dors.

2. Winning 6 European golden shoes.

3. Scoring 91 goals in a calendar year.

4. Scoring 75 goals in a league season.

5. Scoring in 21 consecutive league games.

6. Scoring 50 league goals in a single season.

7. Winning three player of the tournaments in international tournaments.

8. Scoring 40 or more goals for nine consecutive seasons.

9. Scoring/Assisting 50 or more goals for 13 consecutive seasons.

10. Winning four man of the match awards in a single World Cup.

As for Barcelona fans all over the world, the dreaded day has finally come. Most of them can still remember the scrawny, shy 17-year old Messi who scored his first-ever professional goal against Albacete via Ronaldinho’s assist. Very few people thought that that watershed moment was passing the baton from one generational talent to another. However, the future isn’t that bleak for Barça. For one, young, exciting talents are emerging from the academy. The likes of Fati, Collado, Trincao, Gavi, Pedri, Puig, Mingueza, Araujo and Dest have shown great promise. Together with the old guards such as Pique, Griezmann, Alba, Busquets and Aguero, they may just paper the gaping cracks that Messi’s sudden departure will inevitably leave.

Messi alone is capable of covering a multitude of sins for coaches and fellow players. Good luck trying to replace such a player.

As for the man himself, this is a perfect opportunity to silence his diminishing number of detractors that he can cut it away from his comfort zone — whatever that means. Of course, Messi isn’t getting any younger, but I would bet my bottom kobo for him to fare well at any league in the world.

Aliyu Yakubu Yusuf is a lecturer at the English and Literary Studies Department, Bayero University, Kano. He can be reached via aliyuyy@gmail.com.

By Muhammadu Sabiu

In what has been widely tagged as “the end of an era,” Argentina forward Lionel Messi will leave FC Barcelona after a near two-decade stay at the club due to “financial and structural obstacles.”

This was confirmed by the La Liga giant in a statement.

The statement said, “Despite FC Barcelona and Lionel Messi having reached an agreement and the clear intention of both parties to sign a new contract today, this cannot happen because of financial and structural obstacles (Spanish Liga regulations).

“As a result of this situation, Messi shall not be staying on at FC Barcelona. Both parties deeply regret that the wishes of the player and the club will ultimately not be fulfilled.”

The club also expressed their gratefulness to the 4-time Ballon d’Or winner and wished him well in his future professional career.

“FC Barcelona wholeheartedly expresses its gratitude to the player for his contribution to the aggrandisement of the club and wishes him all the very best for the future in his personal and professional life,” Barça said in the statement.

At the age of 13, Messi joined Barcelona’s youth set-up and he is now the club’s all-time top scorer with 672 goals in 778 appearances.

Recall that he had in 2020 made an attempt to vacate Camp Nou after Barcelona’s humiliating 8-2 loss to Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-finals, but an agreement was later reached, which led to his continued stay at the club.

Messi’s Trophies at Barcelona

Champions Leagues – 4

La Liga titles – 10

Spanish Cups – 7

European Super Cups – 3

Spanish Super Cups – 8

Club World Cups – 3