Un tiro libre sublime en un partido especial.
Lionel Messi llegó a 800 goles en su carrera como futbolista profesional, luego de marcar en la victoria 2-0 de Argentina sobre Panamá, en un partido que le sirvió a La Albiceleste para celebrar junto a sus aficionados el título conseguido en la Copa Mundial de Catar, en noviembre pasado.
If you’ve played enough of the FIFA video game series with friends, then you’re probably familiar with randomizing the teams before a game. Sometimes you’ll get a strange matchup where one player gets a national team and the other gets a club.
That would never happen in real life, right?
Friday will see a situation just like that as the Argentina national team announced it will play a friendly against Primera División leaders River Plate. The game is part of a national celebration for Argentina’s triumph in Qatar.
Argentina worships Leo Messi. It always has been the case, but after the World Cup title, the adoration only multiplied. The love, the obsession, it's so unleashed that when people found out he was eating at a steakhouse in Buenos Aires on Monday night, hundreds gathered around the restaurant to chant his name and police had to come to keep everybody safe.
Talking points from the weekend in European soccer leagues:
BARCELONA TAKE HUGE STEP TOWARDS LALIGA TITLE
Barcelona have tightened their grip at the top of the LaLiga standings after an electric 2-1 comeback win in an El Clásico against bitter rivals Real Madrid on Sunday.
Franck Kessié's stunner in added time gave Barça a well-earned victory that left second-placed Real trailing the leaders by 12 points with only 12 games to be played.
Based on how preposterously good Arsenal and Lionel Messi have been this season, there's only one possible explanation for their respective failures this week: tourist Kim Kardashian.
On Thursday, the 42-year-old socialite made her presence felt at the Emirates with her son Saint (the second-oldest of Kim and Kanye's four children). Cruising at the top of the Premier League table and targeting European glory, Arsenal suffered a shock elimination to a Sporting side that's sitting fourth in Liga Portugal.
After disappointingly crashing out of the UEFA Champions League earlier in the week, PSG bounced back to defeat a feisty Brest side 2-1 on Saturday.
PSG left it late as Lionel Messi found Kylian Mbappé with a perfect pass in the 90th minute to snatch the victory.
This was the 300th assist in Messi’s club career and boy was it a beauty.
¡MBAPPÉ SALVA AL PSG!
El capitán y máximo goleador en la historia del equipo le da el triunfo en el 90+2'
Cristiano Ronaldo was less than pleased after Al Nassr lost 1-0 to Al-Ittihad on Thursday. The result saw Al-Ittihad leapfrog Al Nassr to go top of the Saudi Pro League table and left Ronaldo in a sour mood.
The home crowd for Al-Ittihad found a way to get under Ronaldo’s skin as they repeatedly chanted “Messi” at him. The chant worked to great effect as the Portuguese star was kept off the score sheet and visibly annoyed.
At one point Ronaldo could be seen making hand gestures to the Al-Ittihad fans expressing his displeasure with their chants.
For the second consecutive season, a Paris Saint-Germain club entirely hellbent and solely existing for Champions League glory has failed to advance beyond the competition's last 16.
PSG now faces over six months of deep contemplation before the start of the 2023-24 UCL group stage, and although they'll rue Vitinha's inability to score on an open net/Marco Verratti carrying on the club's tradition of having the softest midfielders in the game, those failures should only emphasize how the entire squad needs investment.
I've been there. Trying to silence a bunch of raucous kids in a classroom is a Herculean task. However, a teacher in Argentina might have found a perfect method to achieve it. And she was generous enough to share her secret with other colleagues on a TikTok video.
A hint? All she had to do was mention Lionel Messi.
Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé both got on the scoresheet Saturday for Paris Saint-Germain as the Ligue 1 leaders defeated Nantes 4-2. Mbappé sealed the victory in the 92nd minute to give PSG a two-goal advantage and make himself the club’s all-time leading goal scorer.
At just 24 years old the Frenchman has scored 201 goals for PSG passing Edinson Cavani’s previous record.