When you are associated with a top knocking club, criticisms always leveled against you that you have lost charm for your national side and this belief gets a strong nod from rest of the world if your performance playing for club and for national team differs significantly. Anyways, domestic leagues across the world are infamous for not releasing key players for national duties and even if they do under any kind of pressure they start imposing severe conditions regarding how to use their priciest assets during national games especially friendlies. We have seen this happened with Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo who plays for Real Madrid and when national team called him for the world cup, Real manager personally requested Portuguese soccer team manager not to use him in unnecessary ‘matches.’ But now, we are not talking about Ronaldo or Real Madrid but their arch rival Barcelona and its highly acclaimed player Lionel Messi who has recently been censured by a large section of media for not playing with full caliber in Brazil world cup.
Messi nightmare did not even end here as several new stories start flashing that four time FIFA Ballon d’Or winner could not be interested in being associated with Albiceleste henceforth and this famed story also got a wide accepted since Messi did not retaliate over it. But now, Argentine league club Arsenal’s President Julio Ricardo Grondona has condemned these false reports about their national hero and said Messi will always be with them no matter who writes what about him and his future. He further added, however, that his involvement in the international games would be limited to important games only so he could devote enough time to club soccer including the Copa America in Chile in 2015. Notably, Messi has always been an integral part of Barcelona forward lineup, in fact, has made more records playing in that position than any other contemporary player.
Grondona talked about whole drama rolling around Messi in the last few weeks and said, “It’s true that Leo is a bit hurt by the criticism and the things that were said. That’s why one of the requests we have made is that he return in honour of my father. It is a just a matter of time before he returns. Leo has to rest for future matches.”
Let’s see how this biggest Argentinean icon manages playing for national team while The Primera División is on the way!