{"id":776677,"date":"2026-07-03T15:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776677\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T15:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:04:12","slug":"world-cup-2026-lionel-messis-argentina-v-cape-verde-how-to-watch-follow-buildup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776677\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Lionel Messi’s Argentina v Cape Verde – how to watch & follow, buildup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lopes will relish Messi duel, says Cape Verde defender’s motherpublished at 13:06 BST<\/p>\n

13:06 BST<\/p>\n

Argentina v Cape Verde (Fri, 23:00 BST)<\/p>\n

\"\"Jana McCabe
BBC Sport NI<\/p>\n

\"RobertoImage source, Getty Images<\/p>\n

The prospect of facing World Cup record goalscorer Lionel Messi in a knockout game would strike fear into most defenders.<\/p>\n

However, Judy Lopes believes her son Roberto ‘Pico’ Lopes will embrace the challenge.<\/p>\n

The Cape Verde centre-back has helped the African side progress to the last 32 from Group H after draws against Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

After finishing runners-up behind European champions Spain, they now face defending champions Argentina in Miami on Friday (23:00 BST) for a spot in the last 16.<\/p>\n

Messi will lead Argentina’s attack and has already scored six goals during what is expected to be his last World Cup.<\/p>\n

“He’ll relish the challenge of taking on Messi at the weekend and he’s always very composed, confident and performs very well under pressure,” she told BBC Sport NI’s Nicola McCarthy.<\/p>\n

“He just takes it all in the stride. He’s very grounded, level-headed and he’ll be well able to block out the noise that’s around in this fixture.<\/p>\n

“People don’t realise he’s very experienced at this stage. He’s played through two Afcons [Africa Cup of Nations] and also spent 10 years with Shamrock Rovers and I don’t think it’ll faze him at all, and I think he’ll relish the challenge and hopefully come out on top.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lopes will relish Messi duel, says Cape Verde defender’s motherpublished at 13:06 BST 13:06 BST Argentina v Cape…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-776677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776677","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=776677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}