BUENOS AIRES: This year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar is set to mark the last time that Argentina captain Lionel Messi plays in football’s showpiece event.
The 35-year-old Paris Saint-Germain forward will be making his fifth appearance at a World Cup when the competition begins on Nov 20.
“There’s some anxiety and nerves at the same time. It is the last one,“ Xinhua quoted Messi telling Latin American streaming service Star Plus.
Argentina are among the favourites to lift international football’s most coveted trophy on Dec 18, having gone 32 games without defeat. The sequence dates back to July 2019 and includes last year’s Copa America triumph - the Albiceleste’s first major title since 1993.
Despite the impressive run, Messi insisted that recent results would count for nothing on football’s biggest stage.
“In a World Cup, anything can happen,“ said Messi, who is Argentina’s all-time leading scorer with 90 goals in 164 games.
“All the matches are very tough. The favourites don’t always end up winning. I don’t know if we’re the favourite, but Argentina are always candidates because of our history. Now even more so because of the form we’re in, but we are not the favourite. I think there are other teams ahead of us.”
Messi said he was at ease with his status as a leader and role model in the current Argentina squad.
And he described last year’s Copa America title as a “monkey off my back” after the Albiceleste’s 2014 World Cup final loss to Germany and successive defeats to Chile in the 2015 and 2016 Copa America finals.
“It’s been very hard but in 2019 a new group with many young people came in and then we won the Copa America,“ he said.
“That helped us a lot. I couldn’t believe it, can’t explain it. It’s one of the goals I needed to wrap everything up. It was very important for me to win something with the national team.”
The 1978 and 1986 World Cup winners will begin their campaign against Saudi Arabia on Nov 22 before facing Mexico and Poland in Group C. - Bernama
