Lionel Messi Nears Ownership of Eldense Football Club
Lionel Messi is closing in on a new role in Spanish football – this time not with a ball at his feet, but with a club in his hands.
According to Spanish newspaper Marca, the Argentine has reached a preliminary agreement to buy Eldense, the recently promoted Segunda División side based in Elda, Alicante. If the deal is finalised, Messi would take full control of the club’s shares, with no third-party partners involved.
It would be his second move into Spanish club ownership this year. Earlier in the season, he acquired Cornellà, a Catalan third-division side, planting the first flag of his post-playing ambitions in the country where he became a global icon with Barcelona. Eldense would push that project into the professional ranks of Spanish football.
This is not a speculative play on a distressed asset, but part of a clear idea: to pour his legacy back into the game. Eldense, newly up in the second tier, offers a bridge between his future life and his past. The club sits in the province of Alicante, within reach of Catalonia, where Messi plans to settle once he eventually leaves Inter Miami and retires from the pitch.
The operation is already moving through the formal channels. Completion is expected in the coming days, once the final legal and contractual work is done, including financial due diligence. One more hurdle remains: approval from Spain’s National Sports Council, which must sign off on the takeover.
Eldense itself has not been a sleepy, family-run outfit for some time. In October 2015, an international investment group with Colombian roots, led by businessman Juan Carlos Trujillo, bought the club from Pascual Pérez. In recent months, Argentine figure Ricardo Beni had also been heavily linked with a possible purchase worth around 12 million euros. Those rumours swirled, then faded. Now Messi’s name has surged to the forefront of the story.
While the boardroom prepares for a potential superstar owner, the mood on the pitch is far less glamorous. Eldense have endured a grim start to life in the second division. Just four league games in, they have collected only two points, and last Monday they dismissed coach Claudio Barragán – the first managerial casualty in Spain’s second tier this season. The club has yet to appoint his successor.
If the agreement is rubber-stamped, the new coach will walk into a dressing room under the gaze of one of football’s greatest players, now turned investor. For Eldense, and for Messi, this is not just a change of ownership. It is a test of whether a legend can reshape a modest club’s future from the boardroom, not the touchline.
