Final ‘almost certainly’ my last World Cup match

Lionel Messi sounds like a man content to ride off into the sunset, win or lose.

In an interview with Guillem Balague of CBS Sports and BBC Radio, Messi acknowledged that Sunday’s 2022 World Cup final, in which Argentina will play either France or Morocco, will “almost certainly” be his last match at a World Cup, and expressed an appreciation for everything that’s brought him to this stage.

“I’m enjoying it and for some time, I have been enjoying it in a different way than in the past,” Messi said in Spanish. “Not only with the national side, but in life, too.”

This will be the second World Cup final for Messi, as Argentina lost to Germany on Mario Götze’s extra-time winner in 2014. It would be Argentina’s first World Cup title since 1986, when Diego Maradona led them past West Germany in Mexico City.

For Messi, it is a chance to cement his legacy on the international stage, where he won his first major trophy only last summer in the Copa America, when Argentina beat Brazil in the final. His relative lack of success with the Albicelestes compared to the club level with Barcelona has always been a knock on his legacy, particularly back home in Argentina.

In his last World Cup, though, Messi has been excellent, with a penalty kick goal and a dazzling assist in the semifinal against Croatia being arguably his best performance in a tournament where he has been the standout player. Argentina will go into the final with confidence.

“The truth is that it is a very powerful group, very strong,” Messi said. “We said it when we lost our first game [to Saudi Arabia] which none of us expected, that we had trust in ourselves because we know what we have in this group, the strength that it has and in the end, that helped us grow, made us stronger and we knew that we could achieve this.

“A lot of happiness, obviously, to be able to achieve this, to be able to finish my career in the World Cup playing my last game in a final and the truth is that everything I experienced in this World Cup is something very exciting, what the people here have experienced and how the people back in Argentina are enjoying it.”

Win or lose, Messi stressed the achievements of the Argentine national team, which went 36 matches in a row unbeaten before the stunning loss to Saudi Arabia, and won a major trophy for the first time since the 1993 Copa America last summer.

“Obviously we all want to raise it, we want to be World Champions, but it’s a football match, anything can happen,” Messi said. “And yes, hopefully this time it will be different from Brazil [2014].”