New Delhi: Argentine superstar Lionel Messi announced that the upcoming Qatar World Cup will be his last, as reported by the news agency AFP. This will be the fifth FIFA World Cup for the 35-year-old player. Messi announced this during an interview with Sebastian Vignolo and told him that this will be his last World Cup.
“If it is my last World Cup? Yes, surely yes, surely yes. I feel good physically, I can have a very good preseason this year that I hadn’t done the year before because of how everything went, training late, playing without rhythm, with the tournament already started, and then I went to the national team, when I came back I had an injury and I never finished starting,” he was quoted by Sports Tiger as saying to Star+.
Imagine if Lionel Messi goes out winning it 🥺 pic.twitter.com/pWYRDSZyft
— GOAL (@goal) October 6, 2022
And he added, “I am counting the days for the World Cup, the truth is, there is a little anxiety of wanting it to be already and the nerves of saying well, we’re here, what’s going to happen, it’s the last one, how is it going to go and yes, on the one hand, we can’t wait for it to arrive and on the other the shit of wanting us to do well.”
“I don’t know if we are the great candidates, but Argentina itself is always a candidate because of history, because of what it means, more so now when we arrive but we are not the favourites, I think there are other selections that are above”, he elaborated.
In 2014, under the captaincy of Messi, the team reached the final but had to face defeat in the title match at the hands of Germany. In the World Cup, Messi has played 19 matches in four editions (2006, 2010, 2014, 2018) and scored six goals.
Messi also plays for the French club Paris Saint-Germain. He has scored 19 goals in 47 matches for this club. Before PSG, Messi was with the Spanish club Barcelona. For Barcelona, he scored 672 goals in 778 matches.
Messi has played a total of four World Cups for Argentina so far. He made his national team debut in 2005 and has scored 90 goals in 164 international matches. He made his debut for Argentina’s senior team in 2005 and has scored 90 goals in 164 matches.