After their 2-0 win over Mexico, Argentina skipper Lionel Messi said his team played like it was the final and they will play another final in two days.
“We had to win today and we could do it. There’s another final coming up on Wednesday and we have to keep fighting all together… Let’s go, Argentina!!!” Messi wrote in his Instagram post.
In the post-match match press conference, Messi had said that all the remaining matches of his team are like finals.
“We can’t let our guard down now,” Lionel Messi told reporters after their win over Mexico. said. “All of our matches are finals now. We can’t mess up,” he added.
“We lived with discomfort and kept the defeat in the opening match in our minds,” PSG forward added.
Messi further added “The days were very long,” after the 1-2 defeat to Saudi Arabia.
“We were eager to have the chance to turn the situation around and luckily we won,” Messi said.
Argentina is second in Group C ahead of its last match against first-place Poland on Wednesday and might need to win it to advance.
It was an eighth World Cup goal for Messi, the same number scored in the tournament by rival Cristiano Ronaldo and also Diego Maradona — Argentina great with whom he is so often compared.
8 – Lionel Messi has now scored as many World Cup goals as Diego Maradona (8), with only Gabriel Batistuta (10) netting more for Argentina at the tournament overall. Breakthrough. pic.twitter.com/cXIcjGbd3p
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) November 26, 2022
Lionel Messi is third in the highest number of goals in internationals with 92 goals, Maradona with 34 goals and Cristiano tops the list with 118 goals.
For some, Messi needs to win the World Cup — the only major title missing from his collection — to join the ranks of Pele and Maradona as football’s greatest-ever players. Thanks to this win, it could still happen.
Earlier in the group, Poland defeated Saudi Arabia 2-0. Poland’s all-time highest goal scorer Robert Lewandowski registered his first goal in World Cup.
