<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Lionel Messi has praised Argentina for passing an \u201cacid test\u201d in bouncing back from losing against Saudi Arabia in their opening match to reach the World Cup final.<\/p>\n The Sunday showpiece will see Argentina face either France or Morocco after Messi inspired Lionel Scaloni\u2019s side to a 3-0 win over Croatia at Lusail Stadium on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Messi, 35, opened the scoring through a 34th-minute penalty before Julian Alvarez\u2019s brace either side of half-time \u2014 including a superb solo run for his first goal \u2014 settled the contest against a jaded Croatia side with midfielder Luka Modric almost certainly playing in his final World Cup match.<\/p>\n Argentina\u2019s revival is a far cry from their Group C start at the same stadium, suffering a stunning 2-1 defeat to Saudi Arabia, ranked 51st in the world.<\/p>\n Only one team \u2014 Spain in 2010 \u2014 has ever lost their opening game at a World Cup and gone on to lift the trophy.<\/p>\n And after making his 25th World Cup appearance, tying the record with Germany\u2019s Lothar Matthaus, and scoring his 11th World Cup goal to surpass Gabriel Batistuta\u2019s Argentina record, Messi said: \u201cI would say that the first match was a hard blow for all of us because we had been unbeaten in 36 matches.<\/p>\n \u201cTo start in such a way in a World Cup was a blow, we did not think we would lose to Saudi Arabia. It was an acid test for this whole squad but this squad proved how strong we are.<\/p>\n \u201cWe won the other matches. It was very difficult what we did because every match was a final and we were aware if we did not win things would be complicated for us.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a mental load because we knew things would be more complicated for us. We managed to win five finals and I hope it will be this way for the final game.<\/p>\n \u201cInternally we were confident that we would make it because we know what we are capable of as a squad. We lost in the first match due to fine details but it helped us to be stronger.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s enjoy this moment. It\u2019s great to see the joy in our fans here and in Argentina. We are going to give all that we have in the final but also need to enjoy what we achieved.<\/p>\n \u201cI am enjoying this moment a lot. We feel strong before the game even after a very long last game, the previous one wasn\u2019t easy at all. We were tired but the group brought its energy on the pitch to face this game.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lionel Messi \u00a0 Lionel Messi has praised Argentina for passing an \u201cacid test\u201d in bouncing back from losing against Saudi Arabia in their opening match to reach the World Cup final. The Sunday showpiece will see Argentina face either France or Morocco after Messi inspired Lionel Scaloni\u2019s side to a 3-0 win over Croatia at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1265466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[14,24080,1450,6499,2297,6393,26575],"class_list":{"0":"post-1265465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-defeat","9":"tag-feat","10":"tag-final","11":"tag-helped","12":"tag-messi","13":"tag-saudi","14":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265465","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=1265465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1265465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1265465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1265465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}