{"id":56298,"date":"2026-10-07T07:57:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T02:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=56298"},"modified":"2026-10-07T07:57:32","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T02:12:32","slug":"messi-bows-out-of-international-football-with-goal-and-assist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/messi-bows-out-of-international-football-with-goal-and-assist\/","title":{"rendered":"Messi bows out of International Football with goal and assist"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p><strong>Agency, Oct 7:<\/strong>\u00a0Argentine superstar Lionel Messi ended his international career in style, scoring a goal and providing an assist as Argentina defeated Benin 3\u20130 in a friendly on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Playing at the Estadio Monumental, Argentina secured a memorable farewell for their captain. Nicol\u00e1s Otamendi opened the scoring in the 48th minute, heading Argentina into the lead after a goalless first half.<\/p>\n<p>Messi then played a key role in the second goal, setting up Nico Paz in the 61st minute to double Argentina\u2019s advantage. The veteran forward completed the scoring in the 71st minute, converting a penalty to seal a comfortable 3\u20130 victory.<\/p>\n<p>Messi had previously announced his decision to retire from international football. He made his Argentina debut in 2005 and went on to make 207 appearances for the national team, scoring 126 goals.<\/p>\n<p>With that tally, Messi ranks second among the highest-scoring players in men\u2019s international football. Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo leads the list with 146 goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agency, Oct 7:\u00a0Argentine superstar Lionel Messi ended his international career in style, scoring a goal and providing an assist as Argentina defeated Benin 3\u20130 in a friendly on Wednesday morning. Playing at the Estadio Monumental, Argentina secured a memorable farewell for their captain. Nicol\u00e1s Otamendi opened the scoring in the 48th minute, heading Argentina into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","category-main-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56300,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56298\/revisions\/56300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}