Premier League membership bid £35m for Lionel Messi by mistake in ‘messy’ mix-up

Ex-Manchester City assistant Mark Bowen has explained how a “messy” mix-up saw the reigning Premier League champions once accidentally put in a £35million bid for Lionel Messi.

Back in 2008, flushed with cash from their then new Abu Dhabi backed owners, City were spending money for fun. During that summer, they brought in Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta, Tal Ben Haim, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Brazilian striker Jo.

However, they were still keen to land a major marquee signing following the takeover, which eventually ended up in them bringing in Robinho from Real Madrid for £32.5m. They were in the deadline day race to sign then Tottenham star Dimitar Berbatov, but the Bulgarian opted to join rivals Manchester United.

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However, there was a point during that summer City were just throwing out bids here and there to clubs for their big name stars to see what stuck. And this approach led to a “messy” mix-up which saw City bid £35m by accident for Messi, leading Barcelona president Joan Laporta to tell them to effectively get lost.

Speaking on the ‘Business of Sport’ podcast, Bowen, who was Mark Hughes’ number two, said: “So Garry Cook [Ex-Manchester City CEO] had said to Mark, right, the owners, they want to make a statement. They have to make a statement straight away, you know.

“So we played in the Man City Academy’s Golf Day, and we were on the buggy going around, and almost every 10 minutes, Mark’s phone was going bing, bing, bing. And at one time we had £30m plus, circa £30m for [Dimitar] Berbatov, for Robinho, for Franck Ribery, because they were just chucking out to these clubs in Europe, £35m, £30m, [to see] which one would bite, right?

“That’s what we’re doing. So Mark was saying, well, these are the ones we’ve got bids on already, and they’re going to get back to me when one of them bites and as it turned out, it was Robinho.

“So Man City around this time had now started, they’d only had it for a year or so, they had an office in London. So while all this was going on, Garry Cook’s in London, he’s got different people on the board who are in there, and you’re all chasing around, ringing this, ringing that.

“All of a sudden they get this thing through from Barcelona, from the president of Barcelona [Joan Laporta], who basically goes online and in the media saying, ‘who the f*** do Man City think they are, they’re taking the p***’ blah blah blah.

He continued: “So what’s happened here? Well, apparently Man City have offered £35m for Lionel Messi. Now at the time, believe it or not, it wouldn’t have been a ridiculous thing to say because people were talking at the time about Ribery and Messi, which is the better of the two, whatever.

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“We get to the bottom of it, true story. So they were kicking off going, what actually happened was all the people in this office and somebody had turned around, probably Garry Cook and said this is getting messy.

“So somebody has literally sent an offer to Barcelona for Lionel Messi, we are interested in Lionel Messi. The president’s come back and gone, ‘who do you think you are?

“You think you can buy Lionel Messi off us? No chance, please back away’. And somebody in the office said we think this is messy. It’s true.”