A few months after buying Cornellà, the Catalan club playing in Spain’s fifth tier, Leo Messi has reached a preliminary agreement to acquire 100 per cent of Eldense, a Segunda División side. It is a move that completely changes the picture for the Argentine great beyond his playing career. Back in April, when Messi became the owner of Cornellà, the deal could have been seen as a romantic gesture: a club from a town of 92,000 people in the fifth tier, playing just a 15-minute drive from Camp Nou, would become another investment to follow. It would also have been a way for him to move closer again to his Catalonia. Not by chance, in an official statement Messi said he wanted to return to «his roots». Now, though, the strategy behind the Argentine’s investments is becoming increasingly clear: Messi has already begun building a genuine multi-club setup, with Spain at its centre.
Eldense is based in Elda, in the province of Alicante and the Valencian Community, not far from Catalonia, where Messi has already said he wants to live again after his time at Inter Miami. In reality, as newspapers around the world have reported, the agreement to take control of the club has not yet been finalised: approval is still required from the Consejo Superior de Deportes, the body that oversees Spanish sport and approves changes in club ownership, but much of the process is already complete. Messi will buy Eldense from the Colombian TH group, led by Juan Carlos Trujillo with Carolina Holguín as president, which acquired the club from local businessman Pascual Pérez less than a year ago.
Messi had already invested in two other clubs, Deportivo LSM (alongside Luís Suárez, his former Barcelona teammate) and Leones FC. Both, however, are considerably smaller operations than Eldense: Deportivo LSM was acquired while playing in Uruguay’s fourth tier, while Leones FC is effectively a family-run club led by Matías Messi, one of Leo’s brothers. Now, though, the scale is different. Eldense is the first professional club to become part of Messi’s vast commercial empire. It is easy to imagine, then, that the Valencian side will become the main focus of Leo and his entourage’s football interests. It has not, however, made the best start to the season: Eldense are currently 20th in a 22-team Segunda División and have already sacked Claudio Barragán, the coach who led them to promotion just three months ago. There has also been a meeting with Almería in these opening rounds of the season, the club co-owned by Cristiano Ronaldo, who owns 25 per cent of the shares. The match ended 3-0, but Messi had not yet become involved in the project. Now, with the return fixture ahead, there will be another meeting between Leo and his great career-long rival. Only this time, they will be on the other side of the game: as owners and investors, rather than as great players on the pitch.