LIONEL MESSI’S texts to Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola have been revealed in a new book.

The extracts show how close the superstar was to joining his former Barcelona manager in the Premier League.

3Pep Guardiola and Lionel Messi came close to a reunion at Manchester City in 2020Credit: Reuters

3The Argentine was keen on leaving Barca for ManchesterCredit: Getty

On August 17 2020, Messi typed just five words: “Hi Pep: how are you?”

It came after the football icon had suffered another Champions League humiliation at the hands of Bayern Munich in 2020.

Barcelona were dumped out of Europe in the quarter-final – and haven’t got that far since – following an 8-2 battering at the hands of Bayern.

And it seems a fed up Messi was wondering if Guardiola had a place in his squad for him.

The Argentine’s dad, Jorge, is then said to have contacted Man City’s chief executive Ferran Soriano, who asked Pep to meet with his son.

After receiving both messages, Guardiola agreed to sit down with Messi at the manager’s Barcelona home – and the conversation went on for SIX HOURS.

In extracts serialised to the Daily Mail, Messi is seen telling Guardiola in 2020: “Boss, I just want to go as far as I possibly can. I still want to do great things.”

Pep replied: “We train hard and you do know that it rains a lot in Manchester?”

Messi: “I’ll cope, I can cope with anything you throw at me.’

Pep: “Leo, we’re both much older than we were. Maybe we won’t get on now.”

At 6.30pm they said goodbye with a warm hug and Guardiola began to put plans in place for Messi’s team to approach the club.

Man City started to get excited with the prospect of the arguably the world’s greatest ever player joining their ranks, as Liverpool had just beaten them to the Premier League title.

Bernardo Silva texted Guardiola on September 3: “Is it true about Messi?” adding “I’d run twice as much.”

In the end Messi did not join Man City after his dad wanted to avoid a legal dispute, and reached a one-year agreement with his boyhood club.

Messi then signed a two-year contract worth £25m per-year with Paris Saint-Germain, before joining MLS side Inter Miami in a blockbuster free transfer in June 2023.

Meanwhile the book also states that Guardiola was not interested in signing Cristiano Ronaldo in 2021 because the forward didn’t fit into their well-oiled system.

Author Marti Perarnau writes in ‘The Pep Revolution’: “How could Ronaldo fit into the precision machine the Catalan has painstakingly built at City?”

City were said to be in for Ronaldo before neighbours Man Utd swooped in to take their club legend back to Old Trafford.