Lionel Messi's Ambitious Move into Spanish Football Ownership
Lionel Messi is preparing to swap the pitch for the boardroom in Spanish football – and this time, the move is far bigger than a symbolic investment.
According to Spanish daily "Marca", the Argentine icon has reached a preliminary agreement to buy Eldense, a club newly promoted to Spain’s second division. If the deal is finalised, Messi will take full control of the club’s shares, with no third-party partners involved.
It would be his first step into ownership in Spanish professional football, and a significant escalation of a project that began earlier this year when he acquired Cornellà, a Catalan third-division side. That first move hinted at a long-term plan. This one underlines it.
Building a post‑playing empire in Spain
Behind the operation sits a clear idea: Messi wants to reinvest his legacy back into the game. Not through exhibition tours or branding exercises, but through clubs that live the grind of league football every weekend.
Eldense offers a very specific profile. The club is based in Elda, in the province of Alicante, a region not far from Catalonia, where Messi intends to settle once his playing days at Inter Miami come to an end. The geography makes sense. So does the timing.
The club has just climbed into the second division, stepping into the demanding world of professional Spanish football. That makes it both a sporting project and a business opportunity: a platform already inside the professional structure, but still small enough to mould.
Completion of the deal is expected in the coming days, once the final legal and contractual work is done. Financial due diligence remains, as does the formal green light from Spain’s National Sports Council, which must approve the takeover.
A club used to change – and now on edge
Eldense is no stranger to upheaval. The badge has already passed through several sets of hands in recent years.
Back in October 2015, an international investment group with Colombian roots, led by businessman Juan Carlos Trujillo, bought the club from Pascual Pérez. More recently, rumours swirled around another potential change of ownership, with Argentine Ricardo Beni linked to a takeover worth around 12 million euros.
Those talks never materialised into a completed deal. Now Messi’s name has returned to the conversation, and this time it carries a very different weight. The prospect of the game’s most recognisable figure stepping in has instantly shifted the tone around the club.
Crisis on the pitch, opportunity off it
While the boardroom prepares for a possible seismic change, life on the pitch looks far less glamorous.
Eldense have started their second-division campaign poorly: just two points from their first four league matches. The pressure told last Monday, when the club sacked coach Claudio Barragán – the first managerial casualty of the second-tier season.
There is no replacement in place yet. No clear sporting project, at least not publicly. Just a struggling team, a vacant dugout, and a fanbase watching events unfold with a mix of concern and curiosity.
Into that vacuum could step Messi, not as the saviour in boots, but as the owner shaping the next chapter. If the agreement is signed and sealed, Eldense will not only be fighting for survival in the table. It will become the test case for how far Messi’s influence can reach once he finally walks away from the pitch.
