Former Argentina forward Javier Saviola said Lionel Messi should not be hauled up for their World Cup exit and given ample time to decide on his international career.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know Argentina didn\u2019t perform as expected in the last World Cup. But I think we should just let Messi be. Just let him relax. He will need time to decide whether he wants to play with Argentina,\u201d said Saviola on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, he will come back but if it is otherwise, it will be his personal choice,\u201d said the 2004 Olympic champion, who shared a World Cup campaign with Messi in 2006.<\/p>\n
Messi had decided to retire from international duty following a defeat against Chile in the 2016 Copa America final, leaving the world shocked. After being coaxed back into the Argentina set-up, Messi carried the national team on his shoulders to qualify for the World Cup this year.<\/p>\n
But Argentina were knocked out of the World Cup after losing 3-4 to eventual champions France in a last 16 match.<\/p>\n
Saviola, who is here as part of Barcelona Legends\u2019 team which will play an exhibition match against Mohun Bagan on Friday, hoped Argentina will play like a \u2018real team\u2019 the next time they take the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cArgentina have a lot of talented players who play for the best clubs in the world but to do well at a major competition you need to be a real team,\u201d Saviola said. \u201cI hope the next time we play a tournament we will be a team and not a collection of individuals. Only then, will we be in a position we deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Argentina forward Javier Saviola said Lionel Messi should not be hauled up for their World Cup exit and given ample time to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43168,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43167","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\/43167","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=43167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43169,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43167\/revisions\/43169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}