Lionel Messi has not been at his best at the Copa America but Brazil defender Thiago Silva says his side will not take their eyes off the Argentina captain for a minute in their semi-final on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe is the best player in the world and he still could spring to life,\u201d Silva told a news conference on Saturday ahead of the first Copa meeting between the sides since the 2007 final, which Brazil won 3-0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe will have to be especially focused on him when we have the ball and when we don\u2019t. Sometimes he can be at walking pace during a game but he\u2019s always looking for space to launch a counterattack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a privilege to be able to face him again and we\u2019ll have to try and put the brakes on him.\u201d\u201cThe truth is I\u2019m not having my best Copa America, it\u2019s always very difficult for us because we want to do something different and attack and teams pack out the middle of the pitch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo one is giving anything away cheaply in this Copa, it\u2019s very difficult to play because the pitches are very bad, it\u2019s shameful. The ball is like a rabbit, it can go anywhere and you can\u2019t dribble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Argentina winger Angel di Maria says Messi is working hard for the team even if he is not making it onto the scoresheet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi has not been at his best at the Copa America but Brazil defender Thiago Silva says his side will not take their eyes off the Argentina captain for a minute in their semi-final on Tuesday. \u201cHe is the best player in the world and he still could spring to life,\u201d Silva told a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64860,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64859","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\/64859","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=64859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64861,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64859\/revisions\/64861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}