Argentine football legend Lionel Messi has announced his retirement from international football after making 207 appearances for Argentina. The 39-year-old forward, who made his senior debut for the national team in 2005, leaves international football as one of the most decorated players in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>
Messi\u2019s international career included some of football\u2019s biggest honors. He guided Argentina to the 2022 FIFA World Cup title and also won two Copa Am\u00e9rica trophies. He was a World Cup runner-up in 2014 and again this summer, bringing his long international journey to an end after more than two decades.<\/p>
In a statement, Messi said the decision had been painful but that he understood the time had come to step away. He emphasized that he had always given everything for the Argentina shirt, including during the years before the team\u2019s recent run of major tournament victories.<\/p>
Messi revealed that he had written his retirement statement on July 21, two days after the World Cup final. He said the death of his father, Jorge, last month confirmed that it was the right moment to make the announcement public and formally end his international career.<\/p>
Following his father\u2019s death, Messi had acknowledged that he had doubts about how much longer he would continue playing for Argentina. He also spoke about the physical difficulties he experienced during the World Cup final against Spain, saying he had pushed himself beyond his physical limits but could no longer continue.<\/p>
Despite retiring from international football, Messi will continue his club career with Inter Miami, where his current contract runs until 2028. He recently made history by scoring four goals in a Major League Soccer match as Inter Miami defeated CF Montreal 7-1.<\/p>
Messi leaves Argentina duty having played a central role in one of the most successful periods in the national team\u2019s history, culminating in the long-awaited World Cup triumph in Qatar in 2022.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Argentine football legend Lionel Messi has announced his retirement from international football after making 207 appearances for Argentina. The 39-year-old forward, who made his senior debut for the national team in 2005, leaves international football as one of the most decorated players in the country\u2019s history. Messi\u2019s international career included some of football\u2019s biggest honors. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5319,"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5317\/revisions\/5319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colorsnewslive.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}