Lionel Messi was Neymar’s teammate at Barcelona and later at PSG.
And he hopes the Brazilian could be a possible rival at the upcoming World Cup.
“Should Neymar go to the World Cup? I can’t be very objective because he’s my friend. Obviously, I’d love for him to go and for good things to happen to him because he deserves it,” he said in an interview with journalist Pollo Alvarez.
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“At World Cups, we always want the best to be there. And Ney, as long as he’s still playing, will always be one of them,” he added.
📸 LLUIS GENE
Messi puts Brazil among the favorites for the World Cup: ‘They are always contenders’
Messi is heading to the sixth World Cup of his career, a record he is expected to share with Cristiano Ronaldo and Mexico’s Ochoa — the trio have played in every edition since Germany 2006.
He was also asked about the player he has rivaled over the past two decades.
📸 Philipp Schmidli – 2016 Getty Images
“What existed was a very beautiful sporting rivalry. I was at Barcelona, he was at Real Madrid, and we competed for everything. But our relationship was always good and respectful. There was never anything personal.”
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Check out all the groups for the World Cup in Mexico, the United States and Canada here.
This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.
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