{"id":2297,"date":"2016-09-02T16:47:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T16:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/?p=2297"},"modified":"2016-09-02T16:47:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T16:47:00","slug":"messi-battling-groin-injury-could-miss-venezuela-qualifier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/2016\/09\/02\/messi-battling-groin-injury-could-miss-venezuela-qualifier\/","title":{"rendered":"Messi battling groin injury, could miss Venezuela qualifier"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wrappingContent \">\n<div class=\"widget storyContent article widget-editable viziwyg-section-37 inpage-widget-21 article_body\">\n<div class=\"custombody print-only\">\n<p>Messi, who had gone back on his decision to quit the team following their Copa America final defeat in June, scored the only goal in a 1-0 home win over Uruguay on Thursday that sent Argentina to the top of the South American group.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-quote fb_iframe_widget\">However, the Argentina captain said he had a groin pain and had to think about his fitness at the start of a busy season for his national side and his club Barcelona.<\/div>\n<p>&#8220;My groin is hurting a lot, from before this match,&#8221; Messi told reporters. &#8220;We&#8217;ll see, I always want to be (in the team) but there are also a lot of important matches coming up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Messi explained why he had said he was retiring from international football after Argentina&#8217;s loss to Chile in New Jersey in which he missed his team&#8217;s first penalty in the decisive shootout.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t deceive anyone in that moment,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I was very disappointed because it was a hard blow and I said that because that&#8217;s what I felt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But afterwards, seeing what this group (of players) is like, and with the affection of the fans, I reconsidered.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It was Messi&#8217;s third defeat in a major final with Argentina in two years including the 2014 World Cup final against Germany in Brazil, and fourth altogether.<\/p>\n<p>Messi is now back gunning for a fourth World Cup appearance in Russia in 2018 with Argentina heading the 10-nation group with 14 points from seven matches.<\/p>\n<p>The top four qualify for the tournament in Russia while the fifth-placed team will go into an inter-continental playoff for another place in the finals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Messi, who had gone back on his decision to quit the team following their Copa America final defeat in June, scored the only goal in a 1-0 home win over Uruguay on Thursday that sent Argentina to the top of the South American group. However, the Argentina captain said he had a groin pain and had to think about his fitness at the start of a busy season for his national side and his club Barcelona. &ldquo;My groin is hurting a lot, from before this match,&rdquo; Messi told reporters. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2299,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297\/revisions\/2299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}