Lionel Messi has confirmed that the upcoming World Cup in Qatar will be his last.
The 2022 tournament will be the fifth for Messi, who made his World Cup debut in 2006. The closest Messi has come to winning the World Cup came in 2014, when he helped Argentina reach the final only to fall to Germany in extra time.
“It’s my last World Cup for sure,” Messi said in an interview with ESPN Argentina. “I feel good, physically, I was able to have a good preseason this year that I hadn’t been able to have the year before. It was essential to start in a different way and to arrive as I did, with a great mentality and a lot of illusion.”
Messi is 35 and will be 39 by the time the 2026 World Cup rolls around. It is unclear whether he will retire from the Argentina national team following the tournament in Qatar.
The PSG star, considered one of the all-time greatest players, has been capped 164 times by Argentina, scoring 90 goals.
Although there will be pressure on Messi to help win Argentina’s first World Cup since 1986, some of that pressure was lifted last summer when Messi and Argentina won the Copa America, the superstar’s first major trophy at the senior level with Argentina.
“I couldn’t believe it, I can’t explain it. It’s one of the goals I needed to close everything. It was fundamental for me to win something with the national team, otherwise I would always be left with the thorn of losing finals,” Messi said.
Argentina will be among the favorites to win the World Cup in Qatar, but Messi has insisted that other countries should be considered more likely to lift the trophy than his own.
“We arrived at a good time with a very strong team, but anything can happen,” he said. “All the games are very difficult. The favorites are not always the ones that end up winning or going the way that it was expected.
“I don’t know if we are the biggest favorites, but Argentina is always a candidate, because of its history and what it means. But we are not the top favorites, there are other teams that are above us.”
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Story originally appeared on Pro Soccer Wire