{"id":44091,"date":"2026-08-31T17:50:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=44091"},"modified":"2026-08-31T17:50:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:50:44","slug":"messi-announces-departure-from-argentina-national-team","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/messi-announces-departure-from-argentina-national-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Messi announces departure from Argentina national team"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"ltr\">Lionel Messi, who captained Argentina to \u200bWorld Cup victory in 2022 \u200cand the final in 2026, said this Monday in a post on Instagram \u200bthat he would be leaving \u200bArgentina&#8217;s national team.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;It was a decision \u2060that hurt and still hurts deep \u200bdown, but I understand that the \u200btime has come. I swear to you that I always gave it my all, \u200bnot just in these last few \u200byears when we won everything, but before that \u200ctoo; \u2060I always fought and left everything on the field for this jersey, to bring you joy and \u200bmake you \u200bfeel proud \u2060to be Argentine through football,&#8221; the 39-year-old posted on \u200bInstagram.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;I leave with the peace \u200bof \u2060mind and pride of having given you alongside my teammates \u00a0moments we \u2060once \u200bonly dreamed of,&#8221; he \u200badded.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":37338,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,20],"class_list":["post-44091","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Messi said this Monday in a post on Instagram.","published_date":"","news_description":"Messi said this Monday in a post on Instagram.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/44091","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":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/44091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44243,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/44091\/revisions\/44243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=44091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}