{"id":133922,"date":"2019-07-08T18:12:20","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T17:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=133922"},"modified":"2019-07-08T18:13:01","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T17:13:01","slug":"messi-facing-two-year-ban-over-copa-america-corruption-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=133922","title":{"rendered":"Messi facing two-year ban over Copa America ‘corruption’ comment"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Argentina captain, Lionel Messi is likely to face a two-year ban from international football, over comments he made after their win over Chile in the Copa America third-place playoff, the UK Mirror reports.<\/p>\n

Messi and his team-mates lost to rivals Brazil in the semi-final. The hosts went on to defeat Peru in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n

Messi was sent off in the third-place playoff following a tussle Chile\u2019s Gary Medel, in which the former Cardiff midfielder appeared to be the aggressor.<\/p>\n

But the referee gave both players their marching orders and the Barcelona superstar stated afterwards: \u201cThere is no doubt, the whole thing is set up for Brazil. I hope the VAR and referees don\u2019t play any part in the final and that Peru can compete but it looks tough to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not want to be part of this corruption, we shouldn\u2019t have to be part of this disrespect we suffered during the Copa America.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could have gone further but we weren\u2019t allowed into the final. Corruption, referees and all the rest stopped people from enjoying the football.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always tell the truth and I\u2019m honest, that is what keeps me calm, if what I say has repercussions that is not my business.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that what happened is because of what I said [against Brazil].<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I said last time perhaps came back to haunt me. With a yellow card that was the end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

CONMEBOL regulations prohibit \u201cinsulting in any means or manner CONMEBOL, its institutions or personnel\u201d, an offence that carries a ban of up to two years.<\/p>\n

A two-year suspension would see Messi miss qualification for the 2022 World Cup, as well as the Copa America next year in Argentina and Colombia.<\/p>\n

CONMEBOL released a statement of their own following Messi\u2019s comment, branding it \u201cunacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n

The statement continued: \u201cSaid accusations represent a lack of respect for the competition, all the football players involved and the hundreds of professionals of CONMEBOL, institution that since 2016 has been tirelessly working to transparent, professionalize and develop South American football.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Argentina captain, Lionel Messi is likely to face a two-year ban from international football, over comments he made after their win over Chile in the Copa America third-place playoff, the UK Mirror reports. Messi and his team-mates lost to rivals Brazil in the semi-final. The hosts went on to defeat Peru in Sunday\u2019s final. Messi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10667],"class_list":["post-133922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-lionel-messi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/132789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}