A man who finished his career in Qatar
Things I learned today.
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He was always a loser.
Strong rumours Inter Miami closing in on deal.
That was a great finish. He appears to be lighting up this tournament.
That was just brilliant from Messi. Eye of the needle stuff
Anyone able to spot this lying open on the parents coffee table or otherwise able to post it up? What’s the gist of it?
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I presume it was because he stuck it to the horrid Dutch post match
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Good on him.
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Tommy Conlon:joy:
Tis Ronay you’d want to be reading.
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Matinez - ‘i fucked you twice’ 
Lionel Messi is letting his mask slip – bad blood runs deep in his veins
Tommy Conlon
As destiny beckons Argentina, their talisman is letting his mask slip
The Argentine celebrations began early on Friday evening and finished late in the wee small hours of Saturday morning.
They began in fact at the precise moment when Brazil’s Marquinhos hit the post with his penalty in the shoot-out against Croatia, thereby eliminating their mighty South American rivals from the 2022 World Cup.
The multitudes of Argentina fans who were already assembled in the Lusail Stadium for their night game with the Netherlands, erupted when, over at the Education City Stadium, poor Marquinhos rattled the woodwork and plunged Brazil into mourning. Dozens of Argentine media in the press seats jumped for joy too, according to reports.
After tempting fate with this early bout of schadenfreude, it would be another five hours and more before the party truly started, having been put through the same penalty shoot-out wringer by Holland before finally making safe haven. They will play Croatia in the first of the semi-finals on Tuesday.
Back at home and among the Argentine diaspora globally, the celebrations were similarly unconfined. Oddly enough, the only citizens whose joy seemed a tad compromised were the players themselves. A seam of anger was running through the euphoria, on the pitch and afterwards in the bowels of the arena. There was argy-bargy, as it were, between themselves and their Dutch counterparts.
Bad blood had been festering throughout the match. Indeed we discovered afterwards it had already taken root well beforehand. The undercurrent was made manifest in a litany of yellow cards and the series of fouls and flashpoints that flared intermittently throughout. The match was closing in on 90 minutes when Leandro Paredes hacked down Holland’s Nathan Ake in front of the Dutch dugout and then booted the ball into said dugout, triggering a pitch invasion from the Dutch subs and a swarm of aggro that included Virgil van Dijk knocking Paredes to the floor.
Argentina were leading 2-1 at that stage and by now the Netherlands were resorting to an aerial bombardment of the opposition’s box in a touching tribute to the glory days of Big Niall Quinn and Big Tony Cascarino. It had already worked once, when Big Wout Weghorst, late of Burnley FC, got his head on a cross in the 83rd minute. Then in the 11th minute of added time, he scrambled home the equaliser from a free kick in which Holland pulled a rabbit out of the hat and fooled the entire opposition.
Cue the penalty shoot-out. Aston Villa’s Emiliano Martinez denied the first two Dutch attempts, paving the way for Inter Milan’s Lautaro Martinez to deliver the winning strike. Back on the half-way line, a photograph that was instantly flashed around the world showed the Argentina players gloating at their shattered Dutch counterparts as they blew the gasket on their ecstasy. This prompted another confrontation of pushing and shoving and general verbals.
Nicolas Otamendi said afterwards that the Dutch deserved the goading they got. The veteran centre half accused various Dutch players of trying to intimidate the Argentina penalty takers. And indeed one picture did show Lautaro Martinez being surrounded by men in orange and appearing to speak to him as he began the long walk from the centre circle. “I celebrate in [their] face,” explained Otamendi, “because there was one Netherlands player who at every penalty kick we had, was coming and saying things to one of our players.” The photo showing the Argies gloating was therefore “taken out of context.”
It would have been hard to take out of context Emiliano Martinez’s comments, fired in the direction of the Dutch subs and sideline personnel when it was all over: “Keep your mouth shut you fking ts, I f*ked you twice!”
Down in the media mixed zone afterwards the goalkeeper still had some stuff to get off his chest. The referee was “giving everything [to] them … he just wanted them to score, that’s basically it,” he told one TV interviewer. “So hopefully we won’t have that ref anymore cos he’s useless.” Asked about his heroics in the shoot-out, he wasn’t interested in much sweet-talking either. “I heard [Louis] van Gaal saying, ‘We got an advantage in penalties, if we go to penalties we win’. I think he need to keep his mouth shut.” At which point, the unnerved TV chap ended the interview.
Lionel Messi evidently had an axe to grind with the Dutch manager too. After he scored his 73rd minute penalty, the great man deliberately made his way towards the vicinity of the Dutch dugout where he pointedly stood and stared at Van Gaal and Edgar Davids and cupped his ears. He held the pose long enough to leave no one in any doubt as to his feelings. Van Gaal looked away. After the shoot-out ended, Messi could be seen standing in front of Van Gaal, jabbing a finger and apparently telling him to shut his mouth.
According to some reports, Messi explained his anger afterwards by saying that Van Gaal had “disrespected” him and his teammates in some pre-match comments. He took another pop at the Dutchman down in the mixed zone when he remarked: “Van Gaal says that they play good football but what he did was put tall people [on] and hit long balls.”
One of those tall people was the aforementioned Wout Weghorst. In a scene that ended up in the realms of comedy, Messi was being interviewed on Argentine television when he cut himself off mid-sentence to glare at somebody off-camera, suddenly distracted by this undesirable presence. It was, according to various reporters, Weghorst. Messi fired a few words at him in Spanish, translated into English more or less as “What are you looking at, you fool? What are you looking at? Get out of here, fool.”
And there were we all along through his gilded, magnificent career, thinking that the little genius wouldn’t say boo to a goose. He had spent his entire career behaving with immaculate concentration on the field, avoiding all manner of physical and verbal provocation, knowing full well the importance of maintaining his mask.
Something about Van Gaal and the Dutch had got under his skin. Or maybe it is that the great mission of his career, the greatest of them all, is disturbing his serenity like never before, because this is his last chance in life to achieve it. The proximity of the prize, and the proximity to the end of his career, have combined to exert an oceanic pressure on his emotional state of mind. His behaviour on Friday night was completely at odds with his normal demeanour. He is feeling it in the marrow of his bones. At 35, the end is nigh, his powers are waning, while the holy grail is hoving ever closer into view; the race between one and the other is evidently taking its toll.
He has two games left in which to do it, starting with Croatia on Tuesday. And it is he who has to do it because he does not have the players around him who can do it for him. Lionel Messi is taking no prisoners now.
Tommy has a lot of second hand sources in his piece,he’s obviously a Ronaldo fan boy.As for Messi letting his mask “slip” who cares.
Leo, Leo, Leo
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Woeful journalism
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Argentina va a salir campeón,
Argentina va a salir campeón,
se lo dedicamos a todos,
la reputa madre que lo re parió!!!
Argentina va a salir campeón,
Argentina va a salir campeón,
se lo dedicamos a todos,
la reputa madre que lo re parió!!!
Argentina va a salir campeón,
Argentina va a salir campeón,
se lo dedicamos a todos,
la reputa madre que lo re parió!!!
That’s a fair stretch of a headline from that article, before you even get to the article itself.
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Double standards but nothing from sky sports or the daily mail. Their readers would be too thick to try and figure it out
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