City have been heavily linked with the eight-time Ballon d’Or on a number of occasions over the years and were believed to be close to doing deal back in 2020 when Messi wanted to leave Barcelona.
But 12 years before that, City tabled an offer for the Argentinian icon – even if wasn’t exactly international. Back in 2008, City, having been lurched in mid-table mediocrity, were taken over by the Abu Dhabi United Group on transfer deadline day.
Following on from the appointment of Mark Hughes as replacement for the late Sven Goran Eriksson, City had signed Jo, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Tal Ben Haim, Vicent Kompany and Pablo Zabaleta.
But the club’s top brass wanted a marquee signing, with names like Ronaldo Nazario, Ronaldiho, Dimitar Berbatov and Fernando Torres all being mentioned.
And according to City’s former chief executive Garry Cook, City proceeded to bid around £70 million for Messi after a whole lot of miscommunication involving Pairoj Piempongsant, assistant to then-owner Thaksin Shinawatra and chief operating officer Paul Aldridge.
“The phone was on the table and he was speaking to Paul Aldridge, who had previously been with West Ham and was also part of Thaksin’s world,” Cook recalled to the Athletic.
“There’s Paul with his London accent: ‘Pairoj, you got to tell me what we’re doing, it’s getting out of control’.
“Pairoj was lying on a chaise lounge, getting a massage, and shouting: ‘Yes, yes, yes! Very messy, messy, it’s getting messy.’
“Something got lost in translation and — on my daughter’s eyesight, this is the truth — that was misheard as ‘we’ve got to get Messi’”.
Although the bid was made out of error, City followed through and Barcelona responded by getting in touch with the Premier League to see if the offer was indeed legitimate.
It would have more than doubled the current Premier League transfer record which saw Andriy Shevchenko sign for Chelsea in a £30 million deal in 2006. It’s claimed Barca would have considered the offer had it been made earlier on in the transfer window.
Cook continued: “Paul came to me afterwards: ‘Garry, this is getting confusing, I don’t know what we are doing here.’
“I said: ‘Put the offer in, let’s see what we come up with’.
“Then Dave Richards called me the next day from the Premier League: ‘Garry, have you put in an offer for Lionel Messi? Seventy million pounds? Are you mad?’”
“He said he’d had a call from Barcelona and they wanted to know if it was real.
