{"id":504174,"date":"2026-06-17T10:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T10:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504174\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T10:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T10:32:09","slug":"lionel-messi-argentina-captain-explains-tears-after-argentina-goal-were-unrelated-to-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/504174\/","title":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi: Argentina captain explains tears after Argentina goal were ‘unrelated to football’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lionel Messi says he was brought to tears after scoring the opening goal in Argentina’s 3-0 win against Algeria because of a matter “completely unrelated to football”.<\/p>\n

The Argentina captain claimed a magnificent hat-trick<\/a> on his 200th appearance for his country as his side made the perfect start to their World Cup defence.<\/p>\n

After curling home a wonderful opener after 18 minutes, the 38-year-old was swarmed by team-mates in celebration before being spotted wiping away tears on his shirt.<\/p>\n

“Why did I cry? It was something completely unrelated to football,” said Messi. <\/p>\n

“I went through some difficult days, but I’m grateful to the entire delegation and my team-mates because they were always by my side, giving me a lot of strength to help me get through it.”<\/p>\n

Messi’s hat-trick, which was his first at a World Cup, took his finals goal tally to 16, moving him level with Germany’s Miroslav Klose as the all-time leading scorer in the competition’s history.<\/p>\n

Messi also became the first player in history to feature at six World Cups, 20 years to the day since his debut at the tournament, where he scored in a 6-0 win over Serbia and Montenegro.<\/p>\n

The eight-time Ballon d’Or winner’s performance helped Argentina win their opening match at a World Cup as defending champions for the first time, after defeats in 1982 and 1990.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi says he was brought to tears after scoring the opening goal in Argentina’s 3-0 win against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-504174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}