Jorge Messi, the father of soccer star Lionel Messi, died on Friday night at the age of 68 at a medical clinic in the Argentine city of Rosario after a long illness, the Argentine footballer’s family confirmed to Reuters.<\/p>\n
Jorge spent his final months alternating between a medical center in Rosario and his home, accompanied by his wife Celia and his children Rodrigo, Mat\u00edas and Mar\u00eda Sol, the family said.<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi spent time with his father after the World Cup before rejoining his club, Inter Miami, for whom he returned to action a week ago.<\/p>\n
Jorge closely accompanied his son Lionel throughout his career, beginning with his early years at Barcelona. He acted as a crucial pillar of support and, for several years, served as his representative.<\/p>\n
“I always needed my dad’s approval, ever since I was a kid. After every match, I’d ask him what he thought of how I played,” the global soccer star said previously.<\/p>\n
During the World Cup, the captain of the Argentine national team experienced mixed emotions after scoring a hat-trick in the opening match against Algeria, breaking down in tears while celebrating his first goal.<\/p>\n
Later, at a press conference, Lionel explained that his tears were due to “something unrelated to football” after going through “a few difficult, complicated days.”<\/p>\n
Days later, the family issued a statement regarding Jorge’s “health situation”, informing the public that he was undergoing medical treatment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jorge Messi, the father of soccer star Lionel Messi, died on Friday night at the age of 68…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-587144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587144","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=587144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}