<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lionel Messi told his Argentina teammates there are \u201cno excuses\u201d for their shock defeat to Saudi Arabia yesterday.<\/p>\n Argentina slipped to a 2-1 loss at Lusail Stadium despite leading in the first half through Messi\u2019s 10th-minute penalty.<\/p>\n The result will go down as one of the greatest upsets in the history of the World Cup, but Messi insisted there is a way back for his team \u2014 one of the pre-tournament favourites \u2014 if they can deal with the setback.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a very hard blow for everyone, we did not expect to start this way,\u201d Messi said. \u201cThings happen for a reason. We have to prepare for what is coming, we have to win, and it depends on us.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no excuses. We are going to be more united than ever. This group is strong, and we have shown it. It is a situation that we haven\u2019t gone through in a long time. Now we have to show that this is a real group.\u201d<\/p>\n Saudi Arabia manager Herve Renard suggested afterwards that Argentina \u2014 48 places above his team in the world rankings \u2014 might have lacked motivation.<\/p>\n Messi, however, insisted they had not taken their opponents lightly and told fans who have travelled to Qatar in their thousands that they will turn their World Cup campaign around when they face Mexico and Poland.<\/p>\n \u201cMy message to the supporters is to have faith,\u201d Messi added. \u201cWe won\u2019t leave them stranded.<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew that Saudi Arabia is a team with good players, that they move the ball well and that they push the [defensive] line a lot. We worked on it, but we rushed a bit. We have to go back to the base of who we are. We have to think about what\u2019s next.\u201d<\/p>\n Argentina arrived in Qatar as the reigning Copa America champions and on the back of a 36-match unbeaten run \u2014 they would have equalled Italy as the national team with the longest unbeaten run in history by avoiding defeat yesterday.<\/p>\n Coach Lionel Scaloni admitted afterward that the defeat was \u201cdifficult to absorb\u201d but issued a promise that his team would still qualify from Group C.<\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lionel Messi \u00a0 Lionel Messi told his Argentina teammates there are \u201cno excuses\u201d for their shock defeat to Saudi Arabia yesterday. Argentina slipped to a 2-1 loss at Lusail Stadium despite leading in the first half through Messi\u2019s 10th-minute penalty. The result will go down as one of the greatest upsets in the history of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1256381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[2209,2297,6393,7130],"class_list":["post-1256379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-excuse","tag-messi","tag-saudi","tag-slip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1256379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1256379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1256379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1256379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}