Messi situation

USA Today’s Martin Rogers believes Lionel Messi does not like playing for his home country of Argentina in the World Cup.

“He [Messi] has felt the burden of being anointed as a national treasure at a young age and still carries the weight of his country’s World Cup hopes — no, demands — as much as he ever did,” Rogers wrote. “It is a payload that gets heavier with each passing year, every fresh disappointment or missed opportunity.

“This latest chance is hanging by a thread, with Argentina sitting on just a single point after two games and needing to beat Nigeria in St. Petersburg today to have any way of squeezing into the round of 16.

“If Messi feels stress at club level with Barcelona, he does an exquisite job of concealing it. Soccer’s oldest cliche, a phrase so beloved of coaches everywhere, is to take one game at a time. Yet that’s what he does there, just rolling from one challenge to the next, reeling off virtuoso performances with such regularity that we become spoiled by them and are disappointed by anything he does that is merely “very good” rather than ‘godly.’

“It is easier to play with that kind of freedom when you have accomplished everything, and there are no boxes to be ticked for Messi at Barca, where he has won everything worth winning, multiple times, while also collecting a glut of individual accolades.

“However, on the international scene his cupboard is bare.”