![\"Lionel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2286801667...jpeg\")
Lionel Messi #10 of Argentina controls the ball against Pedri #20 and Marc Cucurella #24 of Spain (Getty)<\/p>\nYour support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n
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Lionel Messi has been labelled \u201ca baby\u201d after his apparent attempt to get Marc Cucurella sent off in the World Cup 2026 final. <\/p>\n
The Argentina football captain was reacting to an interaction with the former Spain football defender during a tense final in New York.<\/p>\n
In the immediate aftermath of Enzo Fernandez\u2019s red card for a second yellow card for his foul on Pau Cubarsi, players surrounded the Slovenian referee Slavko Vincic.<\/p>\n
Cucurella could be seen attempting to speak with Messi, but the Argentine forward desperately approach Vincic in a bid to report the Real Madrid star for interacting with him while his mouth was covered.<\/p>\n
Under rules at the Fifa World Cup, players can be sent off for communicating with opposition while hiding their mouth, as was the case for Paraguay\u2019s Miguel Almiron.<\/p>\n
And ITV commentator Lee Dixon reacted in disgust at Messi\u2019s attempt to try even up the teams at 10 players apiece.<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi #10 of Argentina controls the ball against Pedri #20 and Marc Cucurella #24 of Spain (Getty)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe game has gone if you’re getting bookings and red cards for that, to get somebody sent off,\u201d the former England defender said during the broadcast. \u201c\u2018You shouldn\u2019t be such a baby to try and get someone sent off for that, it\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-700689","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\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}