{"id":731871,"date":"2026-06-12T13:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T13:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/731871\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T13:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T13:03:09","slug":"the-best-football-has-ever-seen-age-isnt-a-problem-for-lionel-messi-as-ousmane-dembele-insists-icon-can-lead-argentina-to-world-cup-glory-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/731871\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The best football has ever seen&#8217; &#8211; Age isn&#8217;t a problem for Lionel Messi as Ousmane Dembele insists icon can lead Argentina to World Cup glory again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dembele is fully aware of the immense pressure resting on Les Bleus&#8217; shoulders as they prepare for another deep tournament run, emphasising the need for absolute concentration from his team-mates during the initial phase of the competition. He added: &#8220;There are plenty of favourites. You know how it is &#8211; that label doesn&#8217;t mean anything in football anymore.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are many teams who are favourites in this tournament. Plus, we know that the French national team has reached the last two finals, so we will be a team under immense scrutiny. But we remain focused on the objective. Before thinking about the round of 16 or the quarter-finals, we have to navigate the group stage matches properly.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dembele is fully aware of the immense pressure resting on Les Bleus&#8217; shoulders as they prepare for another&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[12910,64,63,596,2592,108382,115845,18944,15350,86796,24419,85,21418],"class_list":["post-731871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-argentina","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-france","tag-inter-miami-cf","tag-l-messi","tag-ligue-1","tag-major-league-soccer","tag-o-dembele","tag-paris-saint-germain","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}