Lionel Messi Bought His Neighbors’ House Because They Were So Loud

As one of the greatest soccer players to ever step foot onto a field it’s no surprise that Lionel Messi needs plenty of beauty sleep in order to be prepared.

It turns out that there was a period when the Argentinian forward wasn’t getting that due to his very noisy neighbors. But rather than repeatedly asking them to keep it down, noise proofing his entire house, or maybe even getting the authorities involved, Lionel Messi made the simple decision to just buy the house from them. Eventually.

Lionel Messi wasn’t the one to actually make this revelation. Instead, it was his Barcelona team-mate Ivan Rakitic, who did so while conducting an interview with his native Croatian newspaper Novi List, via ESPN, about his private life in Spain.

Unlike Lionel Messi, who lives in Castelldefels, which is about 12 miles southwest of Barcelona, Ivan Rakitic bought his home in Gava Mar. Rakitic, who lives in close proximity to his teammate Javier Mascherano, insisted that Gava Mar is much quieter than Castelldefels, citing the problems that Messi and his young family had with their neighbors.

“I did not have any problems with the neighbours, not like Messi in Castelldefels, for example. The neighbors were a bit loud, so Leo had to buy their house to be alone. Fortunately, I had no such problems.”

According to The Sun, Ivan Rakitic revealed in the same interview that Messi decided to purchase the house because he wanted “to be alone,” which he eventually decided to do in 2013. Messi and his wife should have done so sooner, too, because when they originally bought their house they were offered the property next door, but they turned it down.

Messi and his wife eventually realized they’d made a huge oversight in not purchasing the adjacent home when the owners decided to rent out rooms in the property. But it took a while for them to actually do so, though. According to Diario Gol, Messi’s neighbors were forced to rent out their rooms after being severely hampered by the recession, to such an extent that they were unable to keep up with payments on the mortgage.

After being approached by his neighbors for a second time, Messi turned them down, but the incessant noise from those renting rooms in the house soon forced Lionel Messi’s hand, especially since a large amount of strangers were starting to move around the properties. The publication insisted that the new tenants were “rude,” “nosy,” and repeatedly played “loud music,” all of which left Lionel Messi, his partner Antonella Roccuzzo, and their two young sons Mateo and Thiago, feeling very uneasy.

Trying to enforce his own privacy, Messi actually then erected a large wall between his home and the neighbors. But this huge structure was at odds with local regulations, and the neighbors were able to raise an official complaint with authorities. Slowly Lionel Messi was being dragged into a legal dispute, and there was an increasing chance that he was even going to end up in court.

To stop the situation escalating even further, Lionel Messi decided to purchase the home from his neighbors, with the Barcelona striker’s legal representatives striking up an agreement with the owners that saw them buy it and immediately bring their dispute to an end.

It probably cost Lionel Messi quite a bit to purchase this home, as properties in the region cost around $3 million. However, that shouldn’t have been much of a problem for the Barcelona and Argentina legend, as, according to Forbes, he reportedly brought in around $81 million in 2016 alone. That makes him the world’s second highest-earning athlete, just behind Cristiano Ronaldo’s $88 million.

[Featured Image by Getty/Denis Doyle]