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MADRID. — Barcelona soccer star Lionel Messi will spend precisely ZERO days behind bars — despite being sentenced to 21 months for tax evasion yesterday.

The Argentine superstar (29) and his father were found guilty of tax fraud and were handed a suspended sentence.

Messi has been sentenced to 21 months in prison after a court in Barcelona found him guilty of three counts of tax fraud, a statement from the court said yesterday.

The court also sentenced the Argentine soccer player’s father, Jorge, to 21 months in prison for the same three crimes. The sentence can be appealed through the Spanish supreme court, the statement said. However, under Spanish law a prison sentence under two years can be served under probation, meaning Messi and his father are unlikely to go to jail.

Having been found guilty — after prosecutors claimed they used tax havens in Belize and Uruguay to conceal earnings from image rights — they were given a 21-month suspended sentence yesterday.

The court ordered Messi to pay a fine of around 2 million euros and his father to pay 1,5 million euros for the crimes.

Messi and his father were both found guilty by a court in Barcelona of defrauding the Spanish tax authorities of 4,1 million euros in the period between 2007 and 2009 by not paying tax on image rights earnings. Messi, whose father Jorge was a co-defendant and received the same sentence, was handed a term of under two years and thus, under Spanish law, is unlikely to have to go to prison unless he offends again.