Pique blasts Barca over Messi fiasco: 'New stadium should be named after him'

Gerard Pique criticized Barcelona for their conduct after Lionel Messi said he wanted to leave last summer.

The Spanish defender suggested Messi has earned the right to have the final say on his future and that Barcelona should pay tribute to their all-time leading scorer by naming the redeveloped Camp Nou after him.

"I ask myself: How can it be that the best-ever player to have played the game, who we have been lucky enough to enjoy, wakes up one day and sends a Burofax (recorded delivery mail) because he feels like he’s not being listened to?" Pique said in an interview with La Vanguardia newspaper, as translated by Reuters.

"It’s all too confrontational. What’s going on? Messi deserves everything; the new stadium should be named after him first and then the sponsor. We should preserve our figureheads, not underappreciate them. It really gets to me."

Messi ultimately decided to honor the final year of his contract in order to avoid a legal battle with Barcelona after club president Josep Maria Bartomeu refused to let him leave.

Meanwhile, Pique also revealed he confronted Bartomeu about reports suggesting the club paid a social media agency to criticize players before Barcelona requested that squad members take a salary cut during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I, as a Barca player, see that my club have spent money, money they’re now asking us for (in salary reductions), to criticise us - and I’m not talking about criticising people outside the club, but current players - it’s atrocious," he said.

"I asked (Bartomeu) for an explanation and he said ‘Gerard, I didn’t know about it’, and I believed him. But then you see that the person who was responsible for doing this is still working at the club. That hurts me a lot. And I’m saying that here because I’ve already said it to the president, too."

Pique's comments come just days after Barcelona signed him to a new four-year contract.