Lionel Messi will face the last months of his first season in Pagain Saint Germain With the sole objective of closing the title of the French League 1 as soon as possible and after a brief break, he will assume a tight schedule before playing the Qatar 2022 World Cup with the Argentine National Team, which will run from November 21 to December 18.
Three months after his 35th birthday and with a contract until mid-2023, the Rosario supercrack could not fulfill the maximum dream of his first season in Paris Saint Germain and suffered a new personal frustration in the European Champions League. Messi is the second historical scorer in the Champions League with 125 goals (15 less than Cristiano Ronaldo), but since the 2014/15 season he has not reached the final of the most important tournament at club level. As of 2016, he was eliminated twice in the round of 16 by PSG and Real Madrid, four times in the quarter-finals by Atlético Madrid, Juventus, Roma and Bayern Munich and once in the semi-finals by Liverpool.
The painful and incredible defeat on Wednesday at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium left Mauricio Pochettino’s team with an end to the season without much motivation but with the obligation to conquer the League 1 of France in which PSG still did not shine, took 13 points ahead of its escort Nice when there are eleven dates left to go and 20 to Lille, the team that snatched the title from him last season. If they maintain this advantage, the conquest of the title could take place on April 23 against Lens in Paris or the following weekend against Strasbourg as a visitor. It would be the 39th title of Messi’s career, who made it his goal to reach the record of 43 of his friend and former teammate, the Brazilian Dani Alves.
The pressure to win the title also grew after missing the other two opportunities to add trophies in the season: defeat in the final of the French Super Cup against Lille, in August, and early elimination in the Coupe de France, at the end of January. Next Sunday, PSG will receive Bordeaux at the Parc des Princes stadium in the French capital, where a furious reaction is expected from the public, which has already shown its anger during one of the last home games.
Messi will arrive in Argentina next Monday 21 to join the Argentine National Team who will play the last two dates of the Qualifiers, already classified for the World Cup in Qatar. The Rosario supercrack will be the star and surely the player most applauded by the public who will bid farewell to the National Team in the match on Friday, March 25 at La Bombonera and four days later he will travel to Guayaquil to close the Qualifiers against Gustavo Alfaro’s Ecuadorian team .
At the beginning of June, with the end of the 2021/22 season, it will be time for balances and, surely, for changes. According to speculation in the French press, Mauricio Pochettino should not be PSG’s coach next season, despite ending his contract at the same time as Messi. The work of the Brazilian Leonardo, sporting director of the club, will also be under the scrutiny of the Qatari investment group led by Nasser Al-Khelaifi who bought PSG in 2011.
Before the World Cup in Qatar, Messi will assume a tight calendar since the group stage of the 2022/23 Champions League is scheduled for the first week of September and the last date will be played between November 1 and 2. In between, the French League plans to play the first fifteen dates between August 7 and November 13, a week before the start of the World Cup.
With the Argentine team, the captain plans to play the two games mentioned and then, andhe match against Italy, on June 1 in London for the Continental Champions Final, with the possibility of completing the pending match for the Qualifiers against Brazil, suspended in September 2021, on that FIFA date that will last until June 12. In September, the last FIFA window for friendlies prior to the Qatar World Cup is scheduled and in the last few hours the possibility of facing Mexico and Brazil in the United States also arose.