“Thank you very much to my teammates and to all the people at the club for the welcome they gave me,” wrote recently crowned World Cup champion Lionel Messi in a post. “We are back and looking forward to continuing to meet the objectives of this season now with PSG.”
Rarely have gears had to switch as swiftly as they have this year for professional footballers. Instead of its customary summer slot on the schedule, the World Cup this year took place in the fall, of course, in Qatar, right in the middle of the season for many premier-level leagues around the world.
As a result, the adjustment of going back to work — even if work is playing a game — is a little bit more challenging for those who represented their nations in Qatar. That’s true even for Messi, though it’s easy to imagine the gratification of finally winning his first world title makes everything a little bit easier for him.
The Argentine star returns to Paris Saint-Germain, his club team, fulfilled and yet still hungry. As Messi writes in his post, he is ready now to “continue to meet the objectives of PSG.” The overarching objective is to win the French title — and everything else — and nothing less. Expectations couldn’t be higher.
Messi’s PSG faces Chateauroux on Friday, though it’s unclear whether the Argentine will log significant minutes in the match, having had only a couple of days training with the club team since returning. That said, Messi doesn’t seem to need a lot of practice.
The warm welcome was expected from the club, but there is an aspect of it that comes as a surprise — or at least must be given begrudgingly.
Because for Messi to emerge as champion, Argentina had to beat, of all teams, France in the final. Indeed, his chief World Cup rival was his PSG teammate Kylian Mbappé.
Mbappé practices good sportsmanship, by all accounts, but it’s hard to imagine his Messi welcome was quite as warm as that of some of the other PSG players. Mbappé is likely only assuaged by the fact that he is a mere 24 years old, and surely due to return for many more chances.
