Lionel Messi is optimistic his advisers will be able to sort out his tax problems after he and his father were accused of defrauding the Spanish authorities last month.
.
The Argentine World Player of the Year and his father Jorge, who both denied wrongdoing, allegedly hid more than €4 million by filing false tax returns for the years 2006 to 2009.
.
The prosecutor's office for tax crimes in Catalonia said the sale of Messi's image rights had been hidden via a complex web of shell companies in Uruguay, Belize, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
.
"I am very calm," Rosario-born Messi, who has been resident in Barcelona since 2000 and gained Spanish citizenship in 2005, told a post-training news conference on Wednesday, his first since returning from holiday.
.
"I never take care of that stuff myself and neither does my father," the 26-year-old added.
.
"We have our lawyers and our wealth managers to take care of that and we trust them and they will sort this out.
.
"The truth is that I don't have a clue about all this and that is why we have people taking care of it."
.
Messi is one of the world's highest-paid athletes and earns just over $20 million a season in wages and bonuses, according to Forbes magazine.
.
He also pulls in about $21 million in endorsements from sponsors including Adidas, PepsiCo and P&G and is 10th on Forbes' latest list of top-earning athletes.
Lionel Messi should forget about this whole tax issue and focus on his football career with Barcelona. He has a competition now in the name of Neymar...