Despite the failure of negotiations between his current club Gremio and Messi’s Inter Miami, Luis Suarez has admitted that he and Lionel Messi still “dream of retiring together.”
The Uruguayan signed a two-year contract when he first joined the Brazilian team in January, but they have already decided to extend it till later in the year.
Suarez’s old Barcelona teammates Messi and Sergio Busquets were hoping to reconnect with him at Inter Miami, but transfer negotiations have now broken down. Suarez has not communicated with the Florida-based team.
‘With Messi, we dream of retiring together’, he told Uruguayan TV show Punto Penal.
‘It was something that we always planned when we were in Barcelona. And from one year to the next I went to Atletico and he went to PSG. We dreamed of it and we talked about it that after Barcelona we would go to the United States and nothing happened at the time.
‘Now he made the decision to go there and from what you can see, he looks happy and we hope that at some point that possibility will occur.’ The two forwards have previously had vacations together and have served as standard bearers for their clubs and countries over the years.
With Barcelona, they won the Champions League and four La Liga championships on the field, and they were also close friends off the field. Tata Martino, the manager of Inter Miami, has acknowledged that his team has no control over the situation.
When all was said and done, he claimed, “There are some challenges with regard to his circumstance with Gremio and this means that it is not entirely Inter Miami’s decision.” Suarez, who is now 36, will be aiming for a transfer as soon as it is practical given his ongoing knee issues.
He confirmed that he has not spoken with Gremio. ‘I’m well aware that Inter Miami spoke with Gremio and that the club told them that I have a contract. I can say that [Inter Miami] has not spoken to me.’
Elsewhere, he added: ‘I feel that next year I will not be able to perform due to my fitness and the high demands of the Brazilian championship, which is why the club and I have spoken about ending my contract [with Gremio] a year early.
‘That would be in December. The club agreed and I’m grateful to them. I don’t know if I’ll continue to play somewhere else because I have a chronic issue with my knee that you all know about. I’d ask Gremio supporters to value the fact that they have a 36-year-old player who always plays despite having a lot of pain in his knee. That’s all I ask. ‘
