sport news Lionel Scaloni shuns favourites tag but Argentina are in the form of their ... trends now
'Who knows if there isn’t another one after this,’ says Argentina full-back Nicolas Tagliafico of this being Leo Messi's last attempt at winning the World Cup.
It’s a nice idea – Messi at 39 competing in the 2026 tournament. But speaking before Argentina’s opener against Saudi Arabia today Messi confirmed this will be his last – it’s a good job he and the team are both flying then.
Argentina have now gone 35 games without losing and that run includes a 1-0 victory over Brazil that won them the Copa America last year.
Qatar will mark Lionel Messi's fifth, and final, World Cup tournament 16 years after his first
Coach Lionel Scaloni had no intention of staying in charge when he took over temporarily just to ‘help out’ after the disappointment of the last World Cup.
But it turns out his lack of experience – he had never managed before beyond Argentina’s Under-20s – didn’t matter.
And it also turns out that winning that first trophy for his country, under Scaloni’s quiet leadership, has left Messi looker fresher than ever. Perhaps that’s why Tagliafico mischievously suggests he could go on four more years.
‘Argentina had been a long time without winning anything,’ he says of last year’s Copa America victory.
‘That win wasn’t just good for the people, it was good for us. For Leo, for [Angel] Di Maria who have played a lot of finals with Argentina but had not been able to win one. In terms of the mood around the squad it was the best thing that could have happened.’
Does Messi still need a World Cup, however, to go down as the all-time greatest?
‘I think Leo is the greatest,’ Tagliafico says. ‘Greatest ever? I don’t know because I never saw Diego play, nor Pele.
‘It’s true that there are people who say that to be on the same level as Diego he has to win a World Cup but I’ve been told about so many great players such as Johan Cruyff who couldn’t win a World Cup so I don’t believe that.
‘Hopefully he can win a World Cup and we can end, once and for all, this myth that he has to win one to be like Diego.’
For years the argument about Messi being inferior to Maradona didn’t just focus on the absence of a World Cup. It also centered on him being distant and aloof, not a player’s player, and much less a man of the people like Maradona.
