Lionel Messi is one of the most excellent footballing stars in the entire world. He is a football player with the Argentina National Team and the FC Barcelona. And after decades of halt, patience, and hard work, the legendary footballer ultimately lifted his first major trophy for the national team, filling in one of the most prominent passages in his football career. At the Copa America final, two very long decades ended when Argentina won its first significant title after a 1-0 win against Brazil.
The Copa America trophy was Messi’s first trophy for his national team after a series of distressing failures. Messi had won nearly every soccer honor imaginable with his Barcelona club team, every award, every cup, and championship. But year after year, the superstar had slipped to accomplish a thing with his national team of Argentina.
The match at the Maracana stadium began with numerous blows. Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni assigned few moves from the opening line-up that beat Columbia on penalties in the semi-final. Gonzalo Montiel, Cristian Romero, Marcos Acuna, and Di Maria took the places of Nahuel Molina, Nicolas Tagliafico, Guido Rodriguez and Nicolas Gonzalez. Brazil did not make any adjustments from the team that progressed to the final. And Brazilian team is known for this steadiness in their game plan.
In the beginning, both the teams were quite careful, hardly offering any hits to each other. And when Argentina initiated the scoring on a rare Brazil defensive mistake, with Di Maria’s classy finish, the match became more interesting. The victory goal of Argentina came in the 22nd minute after player Rodrigo de Paul made a long pass to Di Maria. And the 33-year-old veteran striker scored on defending from left-back Renan Lodi to take control and finished a goal.
Argentina further strongly prevented the ball from getting to Neymar. With his dribbles and passes, Neymar attempted hard but he hardly approached Argentina goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez in the first half of the game. Later, the Argentinian team just sat in the back and wished for any counter-attacks. Brazil coach Tite tried to change the dynamic of the match by replacing defensive midfielder Fred for Roberto Firemino and directed to so far much of the second half. But though the Selecao had more ball possession, there were few actual possibilities.
When this historic match concluded, a tearful Messi knelt and put his hands on his face. Then most of his teammates ran towards him to rejoice and threw him into the air. Messi further kissed the trophy before raising it into the air during the presentations. Lionel Messi is the same player who was once criticized by Argentina fans for his quietness, and after this match, he went to the few hundreds of guests chanting his name at the Maracana stadium and chanted with them. However, Messi’s performance in this match was not so powerful as in the early matches of the tournament, during which he scored 4 goals and had 5 assists. Messi had a very clear opportunity in the 88th minute of the match, he indeed attempted to dribble Ederson, but the Brazilian Goalkeeper halted him. However, this champion title granted some relief after all the questions throughout his career on winning Copa America.
The South American trophy is a huge relief for Argentina, which attained its last major title when Messi was only 6 years old. The latest victory in Rio gave the team its 15th Copa America title, this time unbeaten, equalling Uruguay’s total. Brazil has won the South American title nine times. Brazil became last-minute hosts of Copa America, just two weeks after initial organizers Colombia and Argentina withdrew.
For the decider, administrators approved a few thousand fans into the Maracana stadium, which was the exclusive match in the tournament to have viewers. Messi has numerous great titles with Barcelona, and had reached the final of Copa America three times and lost all of them in 2007, 2015, and 2016. The Maracana is the same place where Argentina lost the 2014 World Cup final to Germany. But now after his win in Copa America, the footballer will have great memories at the Maracana. It was a quite huge celebration for Messi, after years of waiting for this one grand victory.
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Reference:
- www.goal.com
- www.wikipedia.org
- www.skysports.com