It’s really happening.

Lionel Messi told Barcelona officials Tuesday he intends to terminate his contract and leave the club this summer, sources told Sam Marsden and Moises Llorens of ESPN.

Messi informed the club of his decision via fax, according to Sid Lowe of The Guardian.

The 33-year-old icon has a contract until 2021, but he’s grown increasingly frustrated by the worsening state of affairs at the Camp Nou. Barca’s humiliating 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarterfinals capped the side’s first season without a trophy since 2007-08, and it appears to have been the final straw in convincing the Argentine it’s time to move on from the club he joined as a teenager in 2001.

Messi’s contract reportedly contains a clause that allows him to unilaterally terminate his deal with the Catalan side at the end of the season. Barcelona, however, insist the clause expired in June, according to Fabrizio Romano of The Guardian.

Various reports in Spain suggest Messi believes the clause is valid through the end of August because the 2019-20 campaign was prolonged due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Barcelona officials will meet in the coming days to discuss the matter, Romano reports, but the club remains adamant Messi will only leave if an interested team satisfies his mammoth €700-million release clause.

The Spanish giants have publicly maintained that the decorated forward will continue to be the pillar of the team under Ronald Koeman since the Dutchman replaced Quique Setien as manager earlier in August. But reports indicate various board members have privately entertained the idea of selling the generational talent in the hopes of reinvesting and rebuilding an aging squad.

It was reported earlier in August that Messi told Koeman he had doubts about his future when the two met to discuss plans for the upcoming season.

It remains to be seen how many clubs could actually afford to sign the six-time Ballon d’Or winner if they need to pay a transfer fee. Manchester City are reportedly “crunching the numbers” to see if a deal is financially viable, while rumblings of Inter Milan’s interest persist.

But if Messi does indeed terminate his contract and becomes a free agent, countless other teams will instantly thrust themselves into competition for his services.

Messi, who has been involved in public disputes with the Barca brass in recent months, seems acutely aware he’s running out of time to add to his four Champions League titles, especially with Barcelona on the verge of a significant rebuild.

CINCINNATI — Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap said he and other Black NFL players were discriminated against because of their race during an offseason workout.

On Monday, Dunlap recalled an instance in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he and a group of Black players were asked by a park ranger to cease the workout and leave while a group of white NFL players were allowed to continue their drills.

“It was appalling to us and it was very frustrating and it was something that almost made me act out of character,” Dunlap told reporters on Monday.

Dunlap said the incident occurred in late June, one month after George Floyd, who is Black, was killed in Minneapolis in late May when a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than 7 minutes.

According to Dunlap, the two groups of NFL players were separated by two fields. A group of young soccer players, which was comprised of mixed ethnicities, was asked to stop. Dunlap said the Black players were “asked to get off the field aggressively as well.” The park ranger, according to Dunlap, allowed the white group to finish its workout.

“We asked them, why did you demand that we leave the field and go to another field when we explained that we were almost done, literally five to 10 minutes, versus the other group that was able to finish the workout,” Dunlap said. “And he pretty much watched and damn-near cheered them on.”

The Fort Lauderdale parks and recreation department, which oversees the park rangers, could not be immediately reached for comment.

The NFL is working Sunday to assess a series of positive COVID-19 results that have all been traced to the same laboratory in New Jersey, raising concerns about the efficacy of the testing program established to minimize spread of the disease.

“Saturday’s daily COVID testing returned several positives tests from each of the clubs serviced by the same laboratory in New Jersey,” the NFL said in a statement Sunday morning. “We are working with our testing partner, BioReference, to investigate these results, while the clubs work to confirm or rule out the positive tests.”

Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane told reporters that at least 10 teams were affected.

The Chicago Bears announced they received nine positive results from their Saturday test regimen. All nine were determined to be false positive results, meaning none were actual indications of infection. The Bears moved back their morning practice to Sunday afternoon “out of an abundance of caution” while they sorted through them.