{"id":608535,"date":"2026-04-16T18:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T18:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/608535\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T18:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T18:34:10","slug":"lionel-messi-buys-catalan-soccer-franchise-ue-cornella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/608535\/","title":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi buys Catalan soccer franchise UE Cornella"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>April 16 (UPI) &#8212; Argentine soccer icon Lionel Messi purchased UE Cornella of Spain&#8217;s Tercera Federacion, the fifth-tier Catalonia-based franchise announced Thursday. Terms were not announced.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This move reinforces Messi&#8217;s close ties to Barcelona and his commitment to the development of sport and local talent in Catalonia &#8212; a connection rooted in his years at FC Barcelona and sustained ever since,&#8221; Cornella<a href=\"https:\/\/uecornella.cat\/en\/leo-messi-new-owner-of-ue-cornella\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:said in a news release;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;said in a news release&quot;}\" class=\"link \"> said in a news release<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Jordi Alba, one of Messi&#8217;s former teammates at Inter Miami and Barcelona, goalie David Raya, Javi Puado, Keita Balde, Aitor Ruibal and Ilie Sanchez are among the players who have played for Cornella.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Messi&#8217;s commitment to young talent is also reflected in the club&#8217;s strong youth structure, with teams competing in the top youth categories at both national and regional levels,&#8221; Cornella said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This commitment has also been demonstrated by the Argentina captain through other youth development initiatives, such as the Messi Cup &#8212; a tournament that held its first edition last December in Miami, featuring eight of the world&#8217;s top U16 teams (Newell&#8217;s Old Boys, Inter Milan, River Plate, Inter Miami, Atl\u00e9tico de Madrid, Chelsea FC, Manchester City, and FC Barcelona).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Cornella (16-7-7) sits in third place in Group V of the Tercera Federacion. The Catalan club will meet Grama in another league match Sunday in Barcelona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 16 (UPI) &#8212; Argentine soccer icon Lionel Messi purchased UE Cornella of Spain&#8217;s Tercera Federacion, the fifth-tier&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[229537,102127,1205,49,48,3293,229534,35431,12546,229535,23975,229538,19318,229536,10884,563,6390,561,82,229533,229532],"class_list":{"0":"post-608535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-aitor-ruibal","9":"tag-atletico-de-madrid","10":"tag-barcelona","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-chelsea-fc","14":"tag-cornella","15":"tag-david-raya","16":"tag-fc-barcelona","17":"tag-ilie-sanchez","18":"tag-inter-milan","19":"tag-javi-puado","20":"tag-jordi-alba","21":"tag-keita-balde","22":"tag-lionel-messi","23":"tag-manchester-city","24":"tag-miami","25":"tag-soccer","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-tercera-federacion","28":"tag-ue-cornella"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}