Lionel Messi has been called up by Argentina to make a farewell appearance in a home friendly in October following \u200bhis international retirement, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) confirmed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“We invited the best \u200cplayer in the world to play, the icon of our selection, our captain Lionel Andres Messi, to have a deserved farewell on October 6, here in Argentina,” AFA President Claudio \u200bTapia said on social media.<\/p>\n
Argentina will play three home friendlies during the \u200bSeptember 21-October 6 FIFA international window, their first matches since \u2060the World Cup.<\/p>\n
They will take on Benin in Buenos Aires’ Monumental Stadium \u200bon October 6, where Messi, who announced his retirement from international football last month, \u200bhas been invited to play his farewell match.<\/p>\n
Argentina will also face Bolivia at Cordoba’s Mario Kempes Stadium on September 30 before moving to Buenos Aires to host Burkina Faso \u200bon October 3.<\/p>\n
The Bolivia match will be played with capacity reduced by \u200b50% as part of FIFA sanctions relating to incidents during this year’s World Cup.<\/p>\n
“Footballers Messi, (Rodrigo) De \u200cPaul \u2060and (Giovani) Lo Celso will be in attendance to take part in the final friendly on October 6. Meanwhile, the names of the players called up from the local league will be announced on Friday,” the AFA said in \u200ba statement announcing the \u200bsquad.<\/p>\n
Leandro Paredes, \u2060Nahuel Molina and Thiago Almada must serve suspensions of 10, seven and one match respectively for their roles in an \u200baltercation after the World Cup final against Spain.<\/p>\n
\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":44306,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-45669","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Argentina will play three home friendlies during the \u200bSeptember 21-October 6 FIFA international window.","published_date":"","news_description":"Argentina will play three home friendlies during the \u200bSeptember 21-October 6 FIFA international window.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/45669","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\/45669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45670,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/45669\/revisions\/45670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=45669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}