LIONEL: Messi has arrived, eventually, at the World Cup.
Argentina have kept their star player under wraps since arriving in Qatar for the World Cup but then he was, smiling, happy, speaking to journalists at the press conference on the dusk of their opening Group ‘ C ’ game against Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
The 35- time-old is playing his fifth World Cup, one he said on Monday could be the last he plays, but he’s noway lifted the jewel that a hot Gray nation has been pining since Diego Maradona took them to the title in 1986.
Messi has for long been Maradona’s heir at law apparent. Winning the World Cup will see him reach the same pedestal as the fabulous Argentine, whose alternate death anniversary falls on Nov 25.
“This is a veritably special World Cup potentially my last to make our dream a reality,” Messi told a packed news conference. “I ’m feeling veritably good, in a veritably good physical condition.”
Messi has been in sparkling form for his club Paris St Germain, racking up both pretensions and assists. But in the many training sessions Argentina have held in Qatar, Messi had been training independently.
“I ’m coming to this World Cup both tête-à-tête and physically,” said Messi “There were rumours of me training piecemeal from the rest of the platoon but they were just preventives.”
The closest Messi came to lifting the World Cup was eight times back in Brazil, when Argentina lost to Germany inextra-time.
He feels that there are parallels to that crusade this time around where Argentina come as one of the hot favourites.
Messi, still, has changed. Gone is the pressure from his face, he’s smiling indeed more, maybe savouring his last appointment with the World Cup.
“I suppose age makes you see effects else,” said Messi. “It opens you to small details. In the history, I did n’t do this. perhaps, now I try to concentrate on all these and enjoy this much further than anything differently.”
Freed from the pressure, Messi might now be suitable to play further freely, with the abandon with which he used to play in his youngish days. That might be just what Argentina need to end their long delay.
