Lionel Messi suspended for two weeks by PSG for breaking club rules
Football superstar Lionel Messi has been suspended for two weeks by Paris Saint-Germain over a trip he made shortly after the Ligue 1 club's 3-1 defeat to Lorient at the weekend.
Messi played the full 90 minutes for Sunday's (30 April) defeat, but it's what he did afterwards which seems to have landed him in a heap of trouble with his club.
Following the defeat, he flew out to Saudi Arabia with his family for a contractually obliged trip, what with Messi being an ambassador for the nation's tourism and their bid to host the 2030 World Cup.
However, the BBC has now reported that Messi has been hit with a 14 day suspension as he made the journey to Saudi Arabia without permission from the club.
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They say he asked PSG for permission to make the journey so he could 'carry out commercial work', but his request was refused.
It means that Messi won't be able to play for PSG or even train with them for the next two weeks, and with the end of the season fast approaching, it could mean there will be precious few further games where he'd be wearing the PSG shirt.
Messi's contract with the French club expires this summer, meaning he could go somewhere else without PSG receiving a transfer fee, though there is the option to trigger a one year extension on the table.
Widely regarded as one of the best footballers of all time, and perhaps even the greatest ever, the 35-year-old Messi is nonetheless in what most football players would see as the final years of their career.
Both he and long running GOAT rival Cristiano Ronaldo defined excellence at the very top of football for an entire generation, but they're now both approaching the twilight of their careers.
Once upon a time the idea of letting Lionel Messi leave your club would have been a disaster of epic proportions, but that may now have changed.
Despite his age, he is still a formidable force in football, scoring 20 goals and racking up 19 assists in 37 appearances for PSG this season.
While the Ligue 1 club are top of the table with five points over their closest rivals, there are still five more league games to go and PSG will be missing Messi on the pitch.
With him banned from both training and playing, he'll definitely be unavailable for fixtures against Troyes and Ajaccio, while he'd have to regain match fitness for the final trio of league games against Auxerre, Strasbourg and Clermont Foot.
Topics: Lionel Messi, Football, Sport
Joe Harker