Lionel Messi is unsure if he will continue playing for Argentina beyond the World Cup.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old briefly stepped away from the Albiceleste in 2016 and is considering bringing a permanent close to an international career that began in 2005.<\/p>\n
His long stint in the national team has been marked with near misses including a defeat to Germany in the 2014 World Cup decider and back-to-back final failures at the Copa America.<\/p>\n
Messi, who was named player of the tournament four years ago, believes Argentina\u2019s accomplishments have been undervalued by his country\u2019s media, and says the trip to Russia could be his last.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know. It will depend how we do, how it ends,\u201d the star attacker told Sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact we\u2019ve lost three finals now has led to some complicated moments with the Argentine press due to the differences in seeing what it means to reach a final.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not easy and [reaching three finals] has to be appreciated. It\u2019s true that winning them is important, but getting there is not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Should they reach the knockout stages, Messi expects Argentina\u2019s bid for a third World Cup title to face stiff opposition from Brazil, Germany, Spain, France and Belgium.<\/p>\n
However, he insists Jorge Sampaoli\u2019s side have nothing to fear in Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi is unsure if he will continue playing for Argentina beyond the World Cup. The 30-year-old briefly stepped away from the Albiceleste in 2016 and is considering bringing a permanent close to an international career that began in 2005. His long stint in the national team has been marked with near misses including a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33789,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33787\/revisions\/33789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}