Lionel Messi is free to represent Argentina in their World Cup qualifiers after his four-match international ban was overturned on appeal.<\/p>\n
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The 29-year-old Barcelona forward was suspended for directing “insulting words” at an assistant referee during a 1-0 win over Chile in March.<\/p>\n
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He missed one match – Argentina’s 2-0 World Cup qualifying loss to Bolivia..<\/p>\n
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A Fifa appeal committee said while his behaviour was “reproachable”, the evidence was not sufficient.<\/p>\n
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He will now be available for matches against Uruguay, Venezuela and Peru as Argentina fight to secure a place at next summer’s World Cup finals in Russia.<\/p>\n
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A fine of 10,000 Swiss francs (\u00a37,800) was also lifted.<\/p>\n
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During the Chile game, Messi was caught on camera venting his anger at an assistant who signalled he had committed a foul.<\/p>\n
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He was not shown a card at the time.<\/p>\n
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The Fifa appeal committee concluded “the evidence available was not sufficient to establish” an infringement had occurred.<\/p>\n
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“The appeal committee nevertheless underlines the importance of always showing respect to the match officials, stressing that such a principle is essential in football and any unsporting conduct that may be contrary to the principles of fair play cannot be accepted,” it said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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Messi had faced missing Argentina’s next three qualifiers, but will now be available for all four of their remaining four matches.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Argentina are fifth in their group of 10, with the top four qualifying automatically and the fifth team going into a play-off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi is free to represent Argentina in their World Cup qualifiers after his four-match international ban was overturned on appeal. The 29-year-old Barcelona forward was suspended for directing “insulting words” at an assistant referee during a 1-0 win over Chile in March. He missed one match – Argentina’s 2-0 World Cup qualifying loss to Bolivia.. A Fifa appeal committee said while his behaviour was “reproachable”, the evidence was not sufficient. He will now be available for matches against Uruguay, Venezuela and Peru as Argentina fight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6547,"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\/6546"}],"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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6548,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6546\/revisions\/6548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}