The Albiceleste captain announced he has reversed his decision to step down from international football, following a conversation with new coach Edgardo Bauza<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi has confirmed in a statement his intention to return to the Argentina national team.<\/p>\n
The Barcelona star made the decision to retire from international football after another heart-breaking loss in the final of the 2016 Copa America.<\/p>\n
Having spoken with new Albiceleste boss Edgardo Bauza, Messi has now made the decision to represent his country once again.<\/p>\n
“I see there are lots of problems in Argentine football and I do not want to create another,” he explained through a statement released on Friday.<\/p>\n
“I do not want to cause any harm, I have always tried to do the opposite and help wherever I could.<\/p>\n
“We have to fix a lot of things in Argentine football, but I’d rather do that from the inside and not criticising from the outside.”<\/p>\n
The captain affirmed that it was his love of Argentina that had convinced him to come back for the next World Cup qualifiers after initially stepping down from the team.<\/p>\n
“A lot of things went through my head the day of the last final and I seriously thought about quitting, but I love this country and this shirt too much,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I thank all the people who want me to keep playing with Argentina; I hope we can soon deliver them some joy.”
\n–
\nBy: Goal.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Albiceleste captain announced he has reversed his decision to step down from international football, following a conversation with new coach Edgardo Bauza Lionel Messi has confirmed in a statement his intention to return to the Argentina national team. The Barcelona star made the decision to retire from international football after another heart-breaking loss in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":238787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/238787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}