Lionel Messi predicted that the 2026 World Cup in North America next year will be on another level, as he searches to retain the title won with Argentina in Qatar last time.
This is likely to be Messi’s last World Cup of an illustrious career that has spanned 21 years. His first appearance on the global stage was all the way back in 2006, and 2026 will be a record-breaking sixth World Cup tournament—Cristiano Ronaldo is set to achieve the same feat with Portugal.
It is the first time the World Cup has been spread across three host nations—the United States, Canada and Mexico—and the biggest to date, with 48 teams to compete. America, in particular, is also soccer crazy now, in a way that it just wasn’t back when the World Cup last came around in 1994.
“I have very high expectations that the World Cup is going to be something extraordinary,” Messi said during his appearance this week at the America Business Forum in Miami.
Argentina are among a host of contenders, although Spain, France, England and Brazil are all considered stronger at this stage, seven months out. If La Albiceleste go all the way again, Messi and a few others would join a relatively small group of players to win it twice.
National soccer icon Daniel Passarella is the only Argentine player on that list, the sole survivor from the country’s 1978 roster that was also still there when they won again in 1986. Italy (1934, 1938) and Brazil (1958, 1962) are the only teams to have successfully repeated at the World Cup.
“When we won the World Cup, I had the same feeling as when my children were born,” Messi fondly recalled of 2022, as Argentina beat France in an all-time great final. “It’s a feeling that’s hard to explain, so special and immense that anything I say about it will always fall short.”
