Barcelona crisis continues: Will Lionel Messi get Luis Enrique fired?

Five days of 2015 was all it took for crisis mode to envelop Barcelona as two club legends Andoni Zubizarreta and Carles Puyol left their roles with the Catalan giants following a shock 1-0 defeat to David Moyes's Real Sociedad at the weekend.

Yet, worse could still be to come with rumours of dressing room discontent between coach Luis Enrique and star players like Lionel Messi and Gerard Pique bringing Enrique's position under serious threat should they fail to comfortably see off Elche in the Copa del Rey in midweek and beat La Liga champions Atletico Madrid at home on Sunday.

Spanish publication Sport revealed that Enrique had to be talked out of taking disciplinary action against Messi for missing Monday’s open training session, coming days after the Argentine and Neymar were both benched for the defeat to Sociedad.

[STUDY: MESSI WORTH FAR MORE THAN RONALDO]

In the end the club’s captains, upon hearing the news, stopped Luis Enrique from carrying out his intentions as they didn’t want him to further disturb the atmosphere. Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets went to see the coach and told him that it was not good for anyone to let the situation get that far, say the paper.

There are now suggestions that Messi’s links to a huge move to Chelsea – which included following the club out of nowhere on Instagram the other day – are but a powerplay to ensure the former Barcelona captain is sacked as coach.

This continues a torrid 12 months for the Catalonians, who have been hit with a transfer ban, lost the Liga title race to Atletico Madrid and saw the signings they managed to bring in while appealing the ban fail to shine.

The most expensive signing in the club's history, Luis Suarez, has scored just one league goal, whilst 18 million euro defender Thomas Vermaelen is yet to make his debut for the club after being sidelined until April with a hamstring injury.

Sorry, Chelsea fans, but it does seem far more likely that Messi is using signs of discontent at Camp Nou to get his own way than it does that he would actually show up at Stamford Bridge anytime soon, unless the two sides are drawn together in a later round of the Champions League, of course.

This does threaten long-term woe for the Spanish side, however, which would in turn make their chances of keeping Messi diminish by the month.

Messi’s angelic image will take a huge blow, too, if it is widely accepted by fans that he went to such lengths to get a manager fired because he had the audacity to make a team decision and drop the club megastar.

Indeed, between this recent discontent and the issues surrounding Messi’s tax case, while we shouldn’t expect a stunning January move for one of the greatest ever footballers, it’s equally hard to imagine him retiring at Camp Nou, either.

The official reason given for Lionel Messi’s surprise no-show for Barcelona’s traditional annual open training session on Monday was ‘gastroenteritis’ but not everyone in Spain was convinced.

As Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernandez had - with unfortunate timing - put it three days earlier, gastroenteritis is often “an excuse for when something else is going on”, so no wonder many pundits in Spain believed that Messi was publicly airing his grievance at being left out of the starting line-up for Barcelona’s 1-0 defeat to David Moyes’ Real Sociedad on Sunday.

It is not the first time Messi has responded to being left out of the team by failing to show at training, as he did the day after Pep Guardiola left him out of a match at Real Sociedad in 2011.

But the Argentinian’s absence on Monday had greater repercussions, as 11,000 fans, mostly children, had bought tickets in advance to watch the session, and he subsequently missed the team’s visit to children’s hospitals in Barcelona.

The ill feeling between Messi and the club’s board can be charted back as far as June 2013 when he was investigated by the public prosecutor for tax fraud and the club failed to show their support for him in public. Earlier that same month Barca announced the signing of Neymar following a lengthy and costly transfer saga, which gave the impression that Messi was no longer the most important player at the club.

Messi's alleged breakdown of his relationship with Enrique and the defeat to Real Sociedad has left Hristo Stoichkov feeling Barca are on a downward spiral.

"It seems to me that Barca are descending into chaos and everything is topsy turvy at the club right now, while added to that the next game is against Atletico Madrid," he told Onda Cero radio.

"We don't want to see Barcelona returning to the days of Louis Van Gaal, when we won the League with just 13,000 people in the stands, but we are heading that way.

"We are on the same path that [former president] Joan Gaspar took in spending millions on four or five players who were useless.

"You've got to look after the world's best player but it appears that because he was allowed an extra two days' holiday he couldn't play as it was too much of a risk he'd get injured.

"Who gave him permission for that? If someone authorises it then it must be on the understanding he comes back and is able to play.

"All players should be treated equally. If Barca had won that game they would be top of the table and it wouldn't be such a big thing, but the problem is that they lost and the way in which they lost."

"Messi will recover and return but Barca's problems are within the club. Messi should end his career there and that’s all there is to it.