• Deal structured to help club with financial fair play
• Messi may not see out contract that ends when he is 39

Barcelona are close to announcing that Lionel Messi has signed a contract to continue with the club. The 34-year-old has agreed a five-year deal rather than initial two-year extension that had been discussed.

The contract is structured to help the club stay within the boundaries of La Liga’s financial fair play regulations. Messi is taking a significant salary cut but bonuses have been worked in and he is due to earn less this coming season than he will the season after as Barcelona wrestle with their finances.

Ethical streetwear co-operative Top Manta says profits will help migrant vendors ‘become legal and work for a decent wage’

After years of selling cheap copies of designer shoes and handbags, Barcelona’s street vendors have set up a co-operative and launched a line of trainers under the brand name Top Manta.

Unlike an earlier attempt to establish a brand in 2017 by sticking a logo on shoes imported from China, the trainers are made in Alicante in Spain and Porto in Portugal.

Former Scotland striker on replacing Maradona at Barça, scoring 30-yard goals in training and Venables not getting enough credit

The day Steve Archibald walked into the Barcelona dressing room he found Bernd Schuster holding his shirt. He had always worn the same number and the contract he had just signed guaranteed he still would, but the German was not letting go. Not because Schuster was attached to the No 8, but because he was desperate not to wear the other available shirt, sitting there untouched: Diego Maradona’s No 10. “I realised something then,” Archibald says, “about the club, Maradona and the pressure.”

Other people’s pressure, that is. “The only pressure I ever felt was Clyde vs Ayr United, my debut,” he says and if there is a recurring theme over a long conversation looking back on a fascinating life on and off the pitch, it is how tough he is, the sheer bloody-mindedness.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. On a damp night at the Parc Des Princes, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain dished up a breezy, open Champions League last 16 second-leg tie marked by a performance of familiar, half-speed brilliance from Lionel Messi.

PSG defended in numbers, sat deep and cashed in their three-goal first leg lead with a 1-1 draw. They were given an easier ride by the astonishing wastefulness of Ousmane Dembélé in front of goal. The attacker was all fine movement and half-baked finishing, missing four good chances in the first half. Paris were deserved victors and will regroup and refocus for the next round. The real story, though, was Messi, whose every exit from this tournament is a kind of death for the neutral spectator, all the more so as he enters his own end-game.