Lionel Messi might play his 1000th professional football match at the 2022 FIFA World Cup final
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Lionel Messi after scoring a goal for his country.
Argentine great Lionel Messi has the chance to do something improbable this time as he can mark the 1000th game of his career by making it to the biggest stage of world football yet again. As per certain calculations, if Argentina wins all their matches, Lionel Messi can celebrate his thousandth game by lifting the world cup in Qatar later this year.
Lionel Messi currently has played 990 matches representing FC Barcelona in 826 matches and 48 matches for Paris Saint-Germain. He has represented the Argentina national time on 164 occasions and is 10 games short of reaching 1,000 matches. Currently, Messi can play six matches for Paris Saint-Germain before taking the flight to Qatar, and then to reach the final he needs to play six matches at the World Cup.
Messi will be needing to rest four matches in the available six matches for PSG in order to mark his 1,000th game at the final in Qatar. He can also break another record by playing the fifth world cup of his career with only players such as Antonio Carvajal, Gianluigi Buffon, Rafa Marquez, and Lothar Matthaus achieving that feat and Cristiano Ronaldo will also join the list.
Last chance for Lionel Messi to achieve the only trophy he has sought for such a long time.
Lionel Messi has played four World Cups before: in Germany in 2006 making it to the quarter-finals, in South Africa in 2010 also making it to the quarter-finals, in Brazil in 2014 being the runners-up, and in Russia, in 2018 he got knocked out in the round of 16 stage. Argentina is currently unbeaten in 35 matches under Lionel Scaloni and everyone expects them to go all the way to the final and win it.
He has made 19 World Cup appearances up till today and should he play the seven matches leading up to the Qatar 2022 final, he could also go past German great Matthaus (25) as the player with the most games (26) in the tournament’s history. Messi even exclaimed that “With our feet on the ground and humility but we are ready to go against anyone in the world,” after their win over Italy in the ‘Finalissima’.
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Soumyadeep Mondal
(882 Articles Published)