The on, off saga as to whether one of the legends of football will be seen of the Croatian coastline this summer has come to an end. The best football player of the world Lionel Messi is not coming to Hvar this summer after all! It was confirmed yesterday by Marko Bralić, a godfather of Lionel's teammate from Barcelona Ivan Rakitić. He also added that the arrival of the football virtuoso was never a sure thing but only a possibility for the future.

Everything went wrong when Slavko Gotovac an entrepreneur from Kaštela whose villa 'Sancta Domenica' was mentioned as a possible Messi's location acted imprudently and told the media that Messi was definitely coming to Croatia. ''That was only self-advertising'', said Bralić, ''he also ruined every future possibility for the football wizard from Argentina to visit our coastline''.
''Messi said that he would think about the arrival. But now when the news from our media spread like a fire across Spain and the Spanish media announced the information about Messi's 'definite' arrival, every possibility of the arrival was actually ruined because he didn't want anyone to know where and when he was going on his vacation'', said Bralić.

We can only guess what Croatia has just lost with this reckless move of the owner of the villa. One cannot escape the fact that Lionel Messi has almost 43.2 million fans on Instagram. If he came to Hvar and released only one photo of him and his family bathing in the Adriatic, just imagine what publicity that would have been for Croatia.