Special Envoy of the Observer in Doha, Qatar
There are already many days away from home in a different country and in many cases with opposite temperatures, those kinds of things begin to appear that under normal conditions would not even deserve a line. The latest example involves one of Lionel Messi’s sons, Ciro. Present in Doha with his mother Antonella Roccuzzo and his two brothers, it was filmed with some stickers from the Panini World Cup collection (note: they are not the same as those of Portugal, with the orange background and not bluish). Without seeing each other, one was that of Emiliano MartÃnez, the other was the joint photograph of Australia. As this year the numbering is not followed and it is limited to the teams, it was ARG 3 and AUS 1. In a jiffy, what was just a bunch of cards with two a little further away became nothing more a prediction for the game.
The fact that Ciro is someone’s son also helps, but it seems that, after that redemption with Mexico that erased the loss against Saudi Arabia, Argentina is in the final and just waiting for their opponents, even taking into account that in theory they would have ahead Holland and Brazil until the decisive match. Here, in the midst of a fan that is a world unto itself within a World Cup that is a world unto itself (reinforced for the matches against Mexico and even more so against Poland, with other elements more accustomed to cheering up groups as if they were realized in the stadium), hope begins to become more than that. And if it’s true that Enzo Fernández earned a space that few can now that he walked away to a standing ovation and his name was heard in the final round of the group stage, it’s about Lionel Messi.
The meeting defined by Argentines and Spaniards as a “duel between obligation and illusion” would mark the 1,000th game of the Argentine star since he reached seniority, between Barcelona, ​​​​PSG and Argentina, constituting at the same time further proof of his ability to reinvent himself at various times in the game, as happened this season in which he achieved a start that few could foresee or anticipate. That was how, in a career full of records and historical data, he would try to break one more barrier: scoring the first goal in a World Cup qualifying round. In other words, even with Diego Maradona’s seven goals, he did not score beyond the group stage in 2006, in 2010 (where he was left blank), in 2014 and 2018. Would he now be capable of breaking that barrier? ? It was a chance on the table against a surprising Australia that was thrashed to open, then beat Tunisia by the smallest margin and defeated Denmark in the same way.
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Source: Observadora
