Following the death of his father Jorge in August, Messi had said he had \u201cserious doubts\u201d about continuing to play football of any sort for \u201cmuch longer\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019ll do without you, I don\u2019t know how to go on. I just played football, and now I have serious doubts about continuing to do so for much longer,\u201d he said then.<\/p>\n
Messi\u2019s contract with Major League Soccer club Inter Miami runs until the end of the 2028 season.<\/p>\n
He has played 207 times for Argentina and is also Argentina\u2019s leading scorer, with 125 goals.<\/p>\n
Messi also won two Copa Americas during his 21-year international career.<\/p>\n
In this year\u2019s finals, Messi had inspired Argentina to another final by scoring eight goals and also providing two assists in the dramatic late comeback against England in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
But the dream of lifting the trophy again proved one match too far as the South Americans were defeated by Spain in the MetLife Stadium in a match that ended in ugly scenes.<\/p>\n
Midfielder Leandro Paredes and several of his Argentina teammates have received bans and fines for their part in clashes with Spain players after the final, Paredes for grabbing Eric Garcia by the throat and wrestling Gavi to the ground.<\/p>\n
Messi, meanwhile, was pictured in tears after receiving his loser\u2019s medal. He said afterwards that the pain of defeat was \u201cimmense\u201d and that it would \u201ctake a long time for this wound to heal\u201d.<\/p>\n
In his statement on Monday, the eight-time Ballon d\u2019Or winner said it was time for a new generation of Argentina players to take up the torch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love, I loved, and I will always love being on the national team,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI gave everything I had, I have nothing more to give, and besides, there are some very talented young players coming up behind me who deserve to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the death of his father Jorge in August, Messi had said he had \u201cserious doubts\u201d about continuing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,8018,5904,5213,71,1019,5832,13620,168033,118355,111,139,69,6652,8667,3048,8466,213,164120,1865,377],"class_list":["post-586210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-argentina","tag-final","tag-football","tag-from","tag-international","tag-july","tag-leading","tag-lionel","tag-messi","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-retires","tag-retiring","tag-said","tag-second","tag-sports","tag-successive","tag-today","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}