{"id":876995,"date":"2026-06-18T23:58:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T23:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/876995\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T23:58:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T23:58:20","slug":"lionel-messi-opens-up-about-difficult-complicated-days-after-being-moved-to-tears-on-the-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/876995\/","title":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi Opens Up About \u2018Difficult, Complicated Days\u2019 After Being Moved to Tears on the Field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Lionel Messi scored a hat trick in Argentina&#8217;s 3-0 World Cup win over Algeria and later acknowledged personal difficulties, marking a milestone night for the 38-year-old. The Daily Mail reported on Wednesday, June 17, that he was in tears after a 17th-minute strike in Kansas City; he finished with four, with one ruled out for offside in Argentina vs Algeria. The Lionel Messi hat trick coincided with his 200th cap, and the BBC noted he drew level with Miroslav Klose as the all-time top World Cup scorer with 16. Per The New York Times, he said the issue was unrelated to sports. He also cited a Rafael Nadal documentary as resonant with his career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi scored a hat trick in Argentina&#8217;s 3-0 World Cup win over Algeria and later acknowledged personal&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":876996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[45],"tags":[32299,181665,5506,355324,221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-876995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-algeria","tag-hat-trick","tag-lionel-messi","tag-miroslav-klose","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}