Espanyol Tried to Sign Messi in 2005, Zabaleta Reveals
Espanyol attempted to lure Lionel Messi away from Barcelona two decades ago following his breakthrough performance at the 2005 Under-20 World Cup, former Argentine defender Pablo Zabaleta has revealed.
The audacious move by Barcelona’s cross-city rivals ultimately failed after the Catalan giants moved swiftly to secure their teenage prodigy, Zabaleta disclosed in an interview with ‘Post United’ this week.
“Espanyol made a move. Obviously, they came to me because they knew about my relationship with Leo, having just played in that Under-20 World Cup,” Zabaleta said. “The issue was that Barcelona had filled all their non-EU player slots in the first team.”
The revelation sheds light on a critical moment in football history when one of the sport’s greatest players could have ended up at a bitter rival club. Messi, then 18, had just helped Argentina win the youth World Cup in the Netherlands, earning the Golden Ball and Golden Boot awards.
Zabaleta, who played alongside Messi in that triumphant campaign, explained that Barcelona’s non-European Union player quota created a brief window of opportunity for Espanyol to explore what would have been a sensational transfer.
“After that World Cup, Messi could not return to playing in the youth team or for Barcelona’s B team. He was ready to go straight into the first team,” Zabaleta recalled. “I remember that, as there was some problem at Barcelona, Espanyol started to make inquiries.”
However, Barcelona’s hierarchy recognized the threat immediately and acted decisively to prevent the unthinkable scenario of losing their prized asset to Espanyol, a club with whom they share one of Spanish football’s most intense local rivalries.
“Barcelona acted so quickly that they didn’t give them an inch to make it a reality. They weren’t going to let a situation of that magnitude slip,” Zabaleta said. “They couldn’t afford to lose a player like Leo to their biggest city rivals.”
The episode, previously unknown to the wider public, highlights how close Barcelona came to what would have been one of football’s most catastrophic administrative failures. Messi went on to become the club’s greatest ever player, scoring 672 goals in 778 appearances and winning 10 La Liga titles and four Champions League trophies before departing for Paris St Germain in 2021.
Barcelona resolved their non-EU player registration issues shortly after Espanyol’s approach, allowing Messi to make his first-team debut in October 2004 under Frank Rijkaard. By the time of the 2005 Under-20 World Cup, he had already made several appearances for the senior side.
Espanyol, meanwhile, have spent much of the past two decades battling relegation and yo-yoing between Spain’s top two divisions, a stark contrast to the success they might have enjoyed had they secured Messi’s signature.
The revelation comes as both Barcelona and Espanyol continue to compete in La Liga this season, with the rivalry between the two clubs as fierce as ever, though few could imagine how different football history might have been had Espanyol’s 2005 gambit succeeded.