Lionel Messi came off the pitch in the 73rd minute of his last club match before the \u200bWorld Cup on Sunday but Inter Miami coach Guillermo \u200cHoyos said he thought the Argentine was just fatigued after playing on a heavy pitch.<\/p>\n
The eight-times Ballon d’Or winner was substituted \u200bafter clutching the back of his thigh in the \u200bwake of one of his trademark free kicks \u2060during Inter’s 6-4 win over the Philadelphia Union in \u200bMiami.<\/p>\n
“We don’t have a medical report on that yet, but \u200bwe will have one shortly,” Hoyos told reporters when asked why the talismanic forward was taken off.<\/p>\n
“He was genuinely suffering from fatigue \u200bin that regard; it is indeed fatigue. He was \u200btired, the pitch was heavy and when in doubt, the standard approach \u200cis \u2060always to ensure you don’t take any risks.”<\/p>\n
Major League Soccer is now taking a mid-season break for the World Cup, which will be co-hosted by the United States, Canada \u200band Mexico \u200bfrom June 11 \u2060to July 19.<\/p>\n
Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni announced a 55-man squad, including Messi, on May \u200b11. He will need to reduce it \u200bto 26 \u2060before FIFA’s June 1 deadline.<\/p>\n
Messi was highly influential as Argentina won the World Cup for a third time in Qatar \u2060four \u200byears ago. They open their title \u200bdefence against Algeria in Kansas City on June 16.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14870,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-35343","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Messi was highly influential as Argentina won the World Cup for a third time in Qatar \u2060four \u200byears ago.","published_date":"","news_description":"Messi was highly influential as Argentina won the World Cup for a third time in Qatar \u2060four \u200byears ago.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35344,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/35343\/revisions\/35344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=35343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}