World Cup: Argentina’s Lionel Messi insulted by Real Madrid’s president

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The richer Florentino Perez gets, the more insufferable he becomes.

Perez is the multimillionaire president of Real Madrid, the second-best club in Spain. On Tuesday, he decided to tell the world that his team would probably be buying a few new players this summer but that Argentina’s Lionel Messi would not be one of them.

Perez’s choice of words was an insult to a player who is unquestionably the best in the world at the moment. Here’s what Perez, 63, told Spain’s Antena 3 Television:

‘Messi is the second-best player in the world after Cristiano Ronaldo. It wouldn’t be a good thing if they were on the same team; that way, there’s better competition.’

Perez spend more than $350 million in bringing Portugal’s Ronaldo, Brazil’s Kaka, Spain’s Xabi Alonso and others to Real Madrid last summer and recently lured Jose Mourinho away from European champion Inter Milan to be the latest through his revolving door of coaches.

But the idea that Barcelona would even contemplate selling Messi to its greatest rival is too ludicrous to contemplate. Barcelona has even said as much.

Perhaps Perez can reconsider who the best player in the world is by comparing how Messi’s Argentina and Ronaldo’s Portugal fare in the World Cup, which starts Friday.

-- Grahame L. Jones in Johannesburg, South Africa