And after the glory, what? While celebrating in a country that if one day dies it will be from football delirium, Lionel Messi begins to wonder how he continues after having reached the summit of Everest. Always cultivators of exaggerations or the most dramatic scenarios, some Argentines have issued a kind of warning or fear in recent hours: “That the French do not do the same thing to Leo as the Italians do to Diego.” It is true that Diego Maradona only resisted nine months after his stormy relationship with the Italians in the 1990 World Cup, until in March 1991 he played his last game in Naples. But the comparison of the year after the idols and his great world feat does not seem to be anchored with what awaits Messi in the coming months.
In a locker room where he recently lost two friends and brand new world champions, such as Ángel Di María and Leandro Paredes —and which from now on he will go on to share with his recent loser in the final, Kylian Mbappé, with whom he does not have a good feeling—, on the 10th he has an invitation from Paris Saint Germain to sign a second contract and extend the first link, which will end on June 30. There is also a principle of agreement, as EL PAÍS has learned, which will be made official when he returns from vacation. Messi wants to stay in Paris and in a club that has been chasing the Champions League for years. At 35 years old, the World Cup has given him the strength to continue at the highest level and to dream of more titles. He also with the Albiceleste. The 2024 Copa América, which was to be played in Ecuador until the Andean country declined to organize it, could go to Argentina. If Messi does not get to play in the 2026 World Cup, when he will be 39 years old, a farewell in his country would be an end befitting the man who mobilized five million people on Tuesday through the streets of the capital.
After having placed their two flagship players in the World Cup final – and Neymar was four minutes away from reaching the semifinal – the owners of PSG want to maintain their show. And Messi seems willing to accept. After a start in which his adaptation to France was not easy, the Argentine and his family are comfortable in Paris, to the point that they carried out renovations in his house, a sign that he looks to the future . Shortly before the World Cup, the club offered to renew his contract for one year with the option of a second season, until 2025. During the World Cup, he seems to have accepted. If anyone doubted his current performance (the French press did not include him among the 30 candidates for the 2022 Ballon d’Or), the World Cup in Qatar had the force of reality and history, as well as legend. No longer obsessed with achieving but always with goals ahead, Messi is now going for a new Champions League, the fifth after those achieved in 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2015 at Barcelona, where they assume that the plans of Messi and PSG they are similar. The good relationship between the Argentine and Xavi remains a sentimental letter for the club that marked the race of 10.
Willing to take advantage of his last two courses of physical splendor in Europe, the future opens other hypotheses. Confirmed by Messi himself that he will continue “a few more games” in the national team -instead he said that he will hardly make it to the next World Cup-, the 2024 Copa América could be his last competition with the Albiceleste. It is true that Conmebol recognized that the United States and Mexico are starting at the top to organize what would be a pre-World Cup 2026, but moving the tournament to Argentina would be a magnificent farewell at home. The authorities analyze it in silence.
Although the American MLS league insists on getting the last Messi from the playing fields, the Newell’s option, the team from whose lower divisions he went to Barcelona at the age of 13 in September 2000, was also favored with the 2021 Copa América and the World Cup 2022. Already definitively and irresistibly idolized by their compatriots, the Rosario team knows that the greater the amount of love in the country, the greater the possibility of a Messi season in Argentine soccer, his return to base camp after having climbed to the Everest.
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