Messi and PSG: a warning from history – and for Manchester United

S o this is how the end comes. Not with a bang. Not with a whimper. Not with a potentially decisive Ligue 1 double header against Troyes and Ajaccio. But instead with a trail of politically weaponised, oddly touching tourist photos.

Here is Lionel Messi staring at a falcon. Here is Lionel Messi looking confused next to a fence. Here is Lionel Messi interacting cautiously with a horse. Here, beyond the staged and clipped images, is an exercise in proxy war and geopolitics as expressed through the late-season schedule of an exceptionally talented 35-year-old converted winger.

There is an obvious absurdity around events in the life of Lionel Messi this week, five days spent inside the deliciously potent nexus between Paris, Doha, Jeddah, the Parc des Princes and the Saudi Tourism Authority.

But there is also a note of deep foreboding here for anyone who cares to look a little closer. The background noise just beneath all this is not just laughter or indifference (although it is also both of these things) but a sense of clarity, a tea-leaf reading of the immediate future. Here is Messi in holiday shorts controversially petting an alpaca, an iconography of modern political power.

More immediately there is a massive, clanging heavily signposted warning here for English football, and for supporters of Manchester United in particular. Perhaps someone, somewhere in the halls of government, the Premier League or the Football Association might even glance across and feel a stab of unease at the way propaganda and carbon politics have transformed the French domestic league, still the world’s greatest talent factory, into a grotesque sporting pantomime. For now this thing will continue to play out right in front of us. Lionel Messi