5 reasons why Lionel Messi quit Argentina

What legacy does Lionel Messi leave behind?

The greatest player of this era has, apparently, hung up his boots with Argentina. After losing his fourth final (three of them in consecutive years) he has decided that his chances of attaining success with Argentina is as low as good songs coming out from Indian Pop.

The straw that broke the came’s back when he himself missed a penalty in the shoot-out, kicking the ball into the orbit which threatened to shatter a NASA satellite in the process. And now, with guilt and grief strangling him to the point of breathlessness, he has called it quits.

Or, was it really for that reason? We would like to think that there is something more to this than just gloom—and hence here are the 5 reasons why we think he quit the international scene…

Note: This is a light-hearted piece meant for humour purposes only. If you take this seriously, you need to watch less Game of Thrones and more Tom and Jerry.

#1 Move the limelight away from failure

Was all the attention making him uncomfortable?

This is just cunning, isn’t it? You are the best player in the world. You are the captain of the team. You are taking a penalty in the final shoot-out of a tournament. And you miss. The world erupts. Yours shatters. And your nation loses the final.

Everyone is talking about you. You are a hot topic. God, even volcanos are icy compared to this. Did Chile actually win the Copa America? Or was this game just a caricature art of Lionel Messi’s failure? The sharks are out and you are the one who will be ripped apart.

So, what do you do? You announce you are retiring from international football.

Lionel Messi did exactly that. Being the best player in the world, the media all but forgot about his miss (the ball is said to have safely on the planet that Anne Hathaway found at the end of the movie ‘Interstellar’) and only focused on his supposed retirement.

Right now, no-one is talking about the penalty miss. Everyone is flooding their Facebook and Twitter timelines by paying homage to the man for his services for the nation.

All that would look so hilarious once he, inevitably, announces he does a Shahid Afridi and comes back to play for Argentina.