Summary of today's events in sports, 14.11 (Sport1)
The Argentina team trained last night (Monday) in Abu Dhabi in front of thousands of spectators who came to see Lionel Messi and the stars of the Albiceleste ahead of their last general return to the World Cup, tomorrow (Wednesday) in Abu Dhabi against the United Arab Emirates team.
The hype is at its peak for the last World Cup of "The Flea", for whom millions of people around the world are keeping their fingers crossed that he will be able to lift the World Cup in Qatar, and just before the opening whistle of his last World Cup, he appeared for a special video interview for the South American Football Association and spoke openly about his life.
One of Messi's interviewers was none other than the former striker Esquiel Labasi, who of course knows Messi well from their time together in the Argentina national team for many years - and it was obvious that Messi feels comfortable with his friend as evidenced by the honest answers to the difficult questions he was asked throughout the interview.
Knows who he is going to face in Qatar.
With Mbappe and Neymar, his PSG teammates (Photo: GettyImages, FRANCK FIFE / AFP)
"When my mother was pregnant with me, my father was convinced that they would have a daughter," said Messi at the beginning of the extraordinary interview, "they had already chosen a name for the girl. I have been playing football in the same style since I was four or five years old, but I got stronger over the years and of course I tried to improve too day, but I have no doubt that I received a gift from God, what I received from him is all the difference."
The move at a very young age from Argentina to Barcelona: "Many things changed. Personally and in terms of football, the move to Barcelona was unusual. In Argentina we mostly ran, we didn't play much with the ball in training, but in Barcelona we trained with the ball. I grew up with a soccer ball, I don't remember myself without him. I always played with my brothers, with my cousins...even with people older than me in the neighborhood. I loved to play and when my brothers wouldn't let me, I would fight with them, fight with them. I spent my childhood in the streets, playing soccer all day long." .
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Messi waving the Copa America (Photo: Reuters)
How he started playing soccer: "My brothers and cousins would play in teams in the neighborhood and my grandmother would take us all to training sessions that were of different ages. One day there was no player and my grandmother asked the coach to let me play, and he agreed. That's where it all started. At school I was lazy And that's something I paid for - yes I behaved well, but they would punish me by not being able to play football and so they forced me to do well in school. When I was 7 or 8 for the first time I went to see Newells at the stadium and there I also played until the age of 12, until the transition to 11 on 11".
Messi, who as a child is known to have undergone treatments and taken growth hormones due to a medical problem from which he suffered, also commented on this: "I started the treatment in Argentina at the age of 11, and it was a very expensive treatment. I did everything I could to help my father meet the payments. I was also tested at River Plate and they They told me that they wanted me and that they were willing to bear all the treatment costs, but I had to get the release from Newells and I knew it was an impossible task. Then I got to 15 days of tests in Barcelona and on the last day we played against a team of kids older than us. It was very special to play in Barcelona - It was amazing that we got clothes from them and even a ball to warm up with before training. It was impressive, something I had not seen before. I had problems in the dressing room, but as soon as I got on the grass, it was all over."
On the fact that the younger generation these days spends less time playing street soccer: "When I was a child in Barcelona, I missed soccer on the street like in Argentina. Today, it's harder for 10-11 year old children to go out to play, both as a result of the street being very dangerous and also because of the technology that brought mobile devices to the world. I also I think it changed the game of soccer a lot, because today kids who play in teams force them to play in a certain way - everything is much more tactical. You can also see that teams that don't have exceptional players manage to make it very difficult for the teams that do, it's a lot of tactical stuff."
"I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with him."
Guardiola and Messi (Photo: Reuters)
On the beginning of the journey in Barcelona's seniors: "Players like Ronaldinho, Deco, Xavi, Puyol and Silvinho helped me a lot. They made me feel like I was one of them right from the start and treated me wonderfully. It's not easy to fit in a dressing room. I also told my father that we had to To do something so that in Argentina they would recognize me and know that I was in Barcelona, so I came to two friendlies of the youth team and from there they already knew me. I started in the youth, continued to the youth team and we won the World Cup under the age of 20."
Messi, who in the past had already retired from the national team and returned after several failures with the Albiceleste, also returned to past events: "I always felt the appreciation of the Argentine people, but there were also those who doubted me. Everyone had an opinion on everything I did - in the 2011 Copa America when we flew to Uruguay in penalties, in the World Cup In 2010 and even in 2006 I was visited and attacked when I wasn't playing. It all started in the Copa America in Venezuela in 2007 when we lost. We had years with so many losses and failures, that's also why I burst into tears after winning the last Copa."
On his relationship with Pep Guardiola in Barcelona: "He gave me everything - he taught us, made us develop and revealed that he had a special generation of players in the team. No matter where we played, we knew we would win. We had confidence already in training even after heavy losses. Every The next day we wouldn't understand how Guardiola managed to prepare us like that for opponents, we knew exactly how we should play and it was amazing - it was so easy and natural that we no longer understood what we were doing, it was special. Guardiola was something special and I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with him ".
At the end, Messi said about the expectations of winning the World Cup: "In 2014 we lost in the final and I was criticized, maybe I would have been criticized even if we had lost to Brazil in the Copa America final. Now I think people understand that it is not only a matter of winning or losing in the final, but also look at The way. There are strong teams, among them Brazil, which has great players like Neymar.
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