Junior Firpo Insists There Is No Problem With Lionel Messi After Offensive Old Tweets Resurface
Barcelona defender Junior Firpo has put offensive tweets about Lionel Messi he posted in 2012 down to the naivety of youth, but he has apologised and insists there has been no problem since he completed his move to Camp Nou from Real Betis earlier this month.
Firpo’s old tweets about Messi, in which he claimed among other things that he could break both of the Argentine’s legs with a single kick, resurfaced when he made the €18m switch to Barça.
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Asked by SPORT about any fall out since his arrival, Firpo replied: "I see him every day in the changing room.
“I know you’re asking this because of the old tweets I made but that’s in the past and we’ve squashed that. It isn’t something I want to make a bigger deal out of,” he added.
“I don’t think he even knew. I was a kid who came through the academy at Betis and I don’t think Messi is going to care about that.”
He went on to explain to Mundo Deportivo: “It’s something that doesn’t matter and that I can explain without problem.”
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The 23-year-old described it as ‘kid stuff’ and admitted he had also tweeted something about his girlfriend at the time, who is now his wife and mother of his daughter, as he tried to highlight just how meaningless things like that can be.
“It turns out that my best friend at the time was from Barça and therefore he was also a Messi fan because Leo is the best without discussion,” Firpo said.
“And I told him to say ugly things about Messi on Twitter. That’s it, kid stuff. From that time there was also a tweet of mine that said some silly things about Julia, who was then my girlfriend and is now my wife and the mother of my daughter.
“They are things that are done when you are 15 years old, when nobody knows you and when you cannot think it will have an impact years later.
“But I also say that if for those tweets someone has felt offended and I have to apologise and apologise, I do it humbly and without a problem.”
