It was around 2:20 a.m. (local time) at the Lusail Stadium. Together with the Argentine journalists, with ‘Olé’ at the head, we waited for Lionel Messi in the mixed zone. And there, with MARCA present, he spoke to us for five minutes, starting with a confirmation: “I am proud to be able to finish my World Cup journey playing this final. What I’m experiencing is exciting. Surely Sunday will be my last game in a World Cup. It will be many years before the next one (2026) and I don’t think I’ll be able to make it. So I hope I can finish in the best way.
Named again as the best player of the match, in the semifinal that Argentina won 3-0 against Croatia, Lionel Messi expressed that his team prepared “very well” the match, that he knew that “it was going to be the one”, because his rival has “a lot of possession, but is messy”, and remarked that he feels “good, strong” and is “enjoying very much” the whole journey with his national team in the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
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“I’m enjoying it all very much. I feel good. I feel strong to face every game. We have been making a big sacrifice. The last game we played was with an extension that was not easy at all. We were tired, but the group got strength from where it doesn’t have to give an extra plus. We played a very serious game. We knew it was going to be the match it was,” he said at a press conference at the Lusail Stadium.
“We prepared the match very well. We knew they were going to have the ball, because they have good players in the middle, but we were going to have our chance, because they get messy quickly. We prepared very well for the match. I’m very happy. Throughout this World Cup I’ve been having a lot of fun and, luckily, I was able to help the group to get things done,” the striker added.
And he remarked the value of the whole team: “This group, beyond the group strength it has, is very intelligent. They know how to read the moments of the match. Scaloni had already said it. It is a very intelligent group, that knows how to suffer when they have to suffer, that knows how to have the ball when they have to have it, when they have to press, to retreat, they know how to read the matches”.
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“And we have a very good coaching staff that leaves nothing to chance, that lets you know every detail of every match and that is a great help for us. At no time did we feel lost on the pitch, we know what we have to do in every game. We knew the match was going to be this way. Croatia has a lot of possession, but we also knew that it could be a strength of ours when we recovered. They are very messy and leave a lot of spaces,” Messi said.
Argentina has reached the final after losing 1-2 to Saudi Arabia in the first matchday. “The first match was a very hard blow for us, because we were coming from 36 matches without losing and to start the World Cup like this, with a rival that we thought we could win it, was a very hard test for us and for this group. But the group once again showed how strong it is, taking each game forward,” Messi said.
“It’s very difficult what we did, because they were all finals, with the great wear and tear of playing every game as a final. We are aware that if we didn’t win it was complicated. We played five finals, we were able to win all five and hopefully the next one will be like this. We were confident that we were going to win, because we know what we are as a group and as a team. It helped us to grow even more in the championship and as a group”, said the PSG striker.