Sergio Aguero has become the latest player to turn down the chance to inherit Lionel Messi’s number 10 shirt at Barcelona.
The iconic shirt number is now lying empty at the Camp Nou after Messi left the club earlier this month to sign a two-year contract at Paris Saint-Germain.
New arrival Aguero wore the same shirt number at Manchester City but he has rejected the opportunity to carry on with the number on his back following the exit of his close friend Messi.
The Argentine striker has confirmed he will be wearing the number 19 shirt at Barca for this coming season after joining the club as a free agent this summer.
Messi, 34, wore the iconic number at the Catalan giants for 13 glittering seasons after inheriting it from Ronaldinho but his move to PSG summer came after he was unable to pen a new contract at Barca.
It follows on from a report on Wednesday that playmaker Philippe Coutinho had also turned down the chance to take on the number 10 shirt number for next season.
Coutinho - who sat out the majority of last season with a knee injury - has been heavily linked with an exit from the Camp Nou but a dearth of transfer offers means that he appears to be increasingly likely to stay at the club this season.
However, he has rejected the opportunity to switch to number 10 at the club - the number he wore across five seasons at Liverpool and during a loan spell at Bayern Munich in the 2019/20 campaign, where he won the treble.
While he played no part in the 4-2 victory over Real Sociedad in La Liga last Sunday, striker Rey Manaj was named on the bench with Coutinho's former No.14 shirt.
Aguero has now also passed up the opportunity to inherit the number from Messi as he confirmed a different shirt number on his social media account.
Defender Gerard Pique launched his Twitch channel where he spoke with famous Spanish Youtubers Ibai Llanos, where they discussed the situation of who would take on the number 10 shirt.
Ibai started the conversation by asking: "Nobody wears 10, right? No guts." To which Pique replied: "Well, I think someone will have to take it on. I told Kun (Aguero) to take that number. But Kun doesn't see it like that."
Ibai then concluded: "That shirt goes with 30 extra kilos of weight."
It remains to be seen which player will eventually replace Messi with the number 10 shirt at the Camp Nou but it seems unlikely that anyone in the current squad will take it on this season.
#SergioAguero #Number10 #LionelMessi
Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/barcelona-news-lionel-messi-number-24792076
