{"id":7273,"date":"2026-09-01T21:37:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T21:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/?p=7273"},"modified":"2026-09-01T21:37:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T21:37:01","slug":"will-there-ever-be-another-lionel-messi-the-short-answer-is-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/?p=7273","title":{"rendered":"Will There Ever Be Another Lionel Messi? The Short Answer Is: Yes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"subnav-title ff-ffc bold fs-23 lh-25 uc pd-b-10\">\n            BROWSE BY\n          <\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-0a453225>As an Argentine international, this may be the end for Lionel Messi \u2014 and I say &#8220;may be&#8221; because he has retired in the past, but this seems to be much more of a true retirement from Argentina.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-0a453225>There are so many different directions and so many different questions that come up when it comes to what Messi did specifically for Argentina.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-0a453225>At the beginning of his career, yes, he was there, but it was always in the context of Diego Maradona \u2014 comparing and contrasting, and all of that. Now, in the eyes of many and certainly in younger generations, he has gone to be the GOAT \u2014\u00a0not just the GOAT of Argentina, but the GOAT in general, and I think it&#8217;s completely fair to argue that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-0a453225>Which brings up question after question of: Will we ever see someone like this again? And the answer to that, very simply, is: Yes, we will.<\/p>\n<p><span>(Photo by Maja Hitij &#8211; FIFA\/FIFA via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-0a453225>Messi, in 207 games, scored 125 goals, including 21 goals in the World Cup, which is second all-time to Kylian Mbapp\u00e9. So, in that sense, we already have seen someone prolific, in terms of scoring goals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-0a453225>But the impact and legendary status because of what he did, especially looking like a guy you would see just walking down the street and yet being this larger than life type of figure, I don\u2019t know when we\u2019ll see someone exactly like him, in the way that he plays and what he has done,<\/p>\n<p class=\"ff-h fs-16 lh-1pt6 mg-b-15 article-content\" data-v-0a453225>If time is the same as any test, yes, someone will come and do things that we didn\u2019t dream were possible in the way that Messi did, or in a different way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BROWSE BY As an Argentine international, this may be the end for Lionel Messi \u2014 and I say &#8220;may be&#8221; because he has retired in the past, but this seems to be much more of a true retirement from Argentina. There are so many different directions and so many different questions that come up when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}