Lionel Messi has accepted that Argentina's 2026 World Cup extra-time defeat to Spain was part of his football journey. Speaking at an event in Oviedo, Spain, where he was set to receive the Princess of Asturias award for sport, Messi, 39, was philosophical about the setback and about his two decades with the national team.
"In football, winning is very difficult, and you have to appreciate the journey, because only one team can win," he said. "It happened to us in the final against Spain and in the final of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil." He stressed that the important thing is to be competitive and give your all, even when you cannot win, and to feel satisfied with the effort regardless of the result.
Messi retired from international duty earlier this month, after scoring 126 goals in 208 appearances. He won the 2022 World Cup and two Copa America titles with the national team. Before lifting his first major trophy, the 2021 Copa America, he had lost three straight major finals in a three-year span, the first to Germany at the 2014 World Cup. He said he learned a lot from those defeats: "To improve, you have to accept your mistakes and try to put them right. It's important to know how to win and how to lose."
Messi also reflected on how he wants to be remembered: as someone who never stopped fighting to achieve his aims. "Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I didn't, but I never stopped trying to win everything that lay ahead of me," he told EFE. The eight-time Ballon d'Or winner spent 20 years at Barcelona after arriving from Argentina as a young teenager. He highlighted the bond with his father and agent Jorge, who passed away in August, and the lesson of perseverance he learned from him: to take the ball and give it a go, not to dwell on the result, because there was always one more move to try.
Source: ESPN Soccer · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing