“Individual awards are secondary”: Lionel Messi focused to win the Copa America after terrific display against Ecuador in Quarter Finals
Lionel Messi continued his outstanding performance in Copa America 2021 as Argentina ran past Ecuador in last night’s Quarter Final match in an emphatic 3-0 victory.
La Albiceleste dominated the game from the very first minute and never looked out of shape despite not using their best playing XI. Argentina head coach Lionel Scaloni is known for his bold decisions and he made one tonight by replacing in form Papu Gomez with 23 year old Fiorentina forward Nico Gonzalez. The youngster looked out of touch in the first few minutes, but coped up with the situation well in the later part of the game.
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The Argentinian talisman Lionel Messi was the man behind every goal in last night’s match. After missing an easy chance in the first few minutes, Lionel Messi made up for his mistake with a beautiful assist to Roddrigo de Paul, who scored his first goal in the blue and white jersey.
Leo provided his second assist of the night in the 84th minute to Lautaro Martinez who doubled his side’s lead.
In the dying minutes of the game, Argentina’s Angel Di Maria won Lionel Messi a free-kick just outside Ecuador’s penalty box. The G.O.A.T made no mistake and scored a marvellous direct free kick goal to wrap up the game for Argentina. This was Messi’s second direct free-kick goal in Copa America 2021. With this, he has now scored 4 goals and provided an equal number of assists in the tournament, leading both the charts.
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What Lionel Messi said after the Match
In the post match interview, Lionel Messi stressed on the fact the Individual accolades are secondary to him and all he is focused on as of now, is to win the Copa America with the joint endeavours of him and his teammates.
“I always said the individual awards are secondary, we are here for something else. I want to congratulate the group for the work they have been doing, it has been several days that we are away from our families. We have an objective and we are thinking about it,” Leo said.
He also added, “It was a very difficult match, we knew about the difficulty of the opponent. It was hard fought until we got the goal, then it got more tangled. The important thing is we took one more step. We tried to play, at times we couldn’t, the pitch didn’t help much. We played a very important match. One of our objectives was to be among the top four best teams. Now we have to rest because there is little time until our next game.”
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