How Paris Saint-Germain have managed to shoehorn arguably the greatest footballer to have ever played the game into their already massive wage bill during a pandemic is a topic that has lead to plenty of head scratching in recent days.
PSG managed to pull off the feat of landing Messi at a time when they already have Neymar Jnr and Kylian Mbappe, as well as landing Achraf Hakimi, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Sergio Ramos and former Liverpool midfielder Gini Wijnaldum this summer.
Financial Fair Play has been the buzzword ever since Messi's signing was confirmed, with PSG taking advantage of UEFA's temporary slackening of the rules that rolls over two years, and with strong revenues and having spent little last summer the French side had some room to manoeuvre when it came to adding to their wage bill.
But it has needed the numbers crunching to make it work, and one of the methods used to bring Messi on board is one that could end up becoming more commonplace and beneficial for clubs like Liverpool, with a huge global fan base.
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Part of Messi's reported €25-30m signing on fee in Paris following his switch from Barcelona saw the Argentinian paid through fan tokens, a cryptocurrency that allows for token holders to vote on mostly minor decisions related to their clubs.
Manchester City, Leeds United, Arsenal, Barcelona, AC Milan and Inter Milan have already latched on to the fan token idea and more of Europe's elite clubs are expected to try and catch the wave when it comes to cryptocurrency, with plenty of clubs launching NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that sell unique digital moments as collectors items.
Liverpool's Diogo Jota has already joined the NFT craze by partnering with Zilliqa to create exclusive digital content that users can buy.
As clubs seek new revenue streams in the wake of the pandemic's affect on their bottom line, firms like Socios, which offer fan tokens and have partnered with a number of major clubs, have come to the fore and clubs have raked in some €200m already in 2021 through fan tokens.
Messi's move to PSG saw sales of new fan tokens rise by €30m (£25.6m), while volumes of traded PSG tokens on the market in the lead up to the signing last week were around the £870m mark, according to Reuters.
The boom in the market, which critics point to as being extremely volatile, means that Messi could make far more on his fan tokens than what was received in his welcome package, with PSG confirming a 'significant' amount of his signing on package was formed through fan tokens.
The biggest clubs in the world, who have the largest fan bases and the most marketable players are the ones who will benefit most from fan tokens as a new revenue stream.
While unofficial Liverpool fan tokens are available on the market the Reds have yet to go all in.
For Liverpool and their rivals who can truly leverage their size when taking into account fan tokens, it opens up the potential to offer new packages to players to sweeten a deal, giving them the chance to earn more money through potential rises in the value of tokens.
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And if you have a large number of tokens then you could make a lot of money, provided the market stays strong of course.
Critics of fan tokens argue that it is monetising fan influence, purporting to be a way of allowing supporters to have a say on decisions but ultimately another way to drain their wallet.
The monetary value of a token fluctuates with the market, and cryptocurrency's value lies in its scarcity, that there are only a finite number that will ever be in circulation.
One token gives fans the ability to vote on online polls, take part in quizzes or get access to special deals, but they aren't a vessel for engaging in serious decision making policy within a club.
But it is a market on the rise, one that has the backing of the likes of Elon Musk and Jay-Z, and with football frantically trying to find new ways of bringing in money to try and get themselves back to where they were pre-pandemic the likelihood is that more and more clubs will get on board, and players could well find that the value of the tokens for the clubs that they are moving to could make them a healthy amount of money when it comes to a welcome package.
