On the morning of February 16, Beijing time, Messi's MLS team Miami International ushered in a warm-up match in the United States, and the opponent was Newell's Old Boys from the Argentine Premier League. For his former parent club, Messi played in both halves and was not substituted until the 60th minute of the game. In the end, the two teams drew 1-1.
So far, Inter Miami's seven warm-up matches before the start of the league have all ended. It must be noted that in these 7 games, Messi played against El Salvador, Dallas, Riyadh Crescent, Riyadh Victory, Vissel Kobe, Newell Old Boys, except for the game against the League Stars in Hong Kong, not even a minute of playing time.
There are two theories afterwards, one is that Messi is injured and the contract stipulates that the player will not have to play in such a situation, and the other is that there is no clause in the contract between the organizer and Inter Miami that Messi must play, and the responsibility lies with the former.
To be sure, the organizers did have to bear part of the responsibility for Messi's non-appearance, so they finally gave half of the refund to the fans as compensation, under the coordination of the Hong Kong government.
But in response to Messi's "injury", almost all the media and fans have bright eyes. Did the Argentine get injured as soon as he arrived in Hong Kong after playing in both games in Riyadh? What's even more exaggerated is that just three days later, Messi came off the bench in Japan's match against Vissel Kobe, and this injury recovered too quickly! No wonder some fans joked that "it was the cherry blossoms in his hometown that quickly treated Messan's injury"!
Compared with the "unexplained" absence from the game, what made the Hong Kong government and even the entire Chinese fans even more dissatisfied was that after the match between Miami International and the Hong Kong League Stars United, Messi refused to accept the award on behalf of the team, and did not line up to shake hands with the Hong Kong chief executive like other teammates, and directly put his hands in his pockets to bypass the crowd and enter the group photo session.
As a player, even if he is a top star in international football, Messi is so rude and arrogant to the vice national chief executive in Hong Kong, China, under the eyes of the whole world, how can our people tolerate it!
Regarding Messi's wrong move, Mr. Huo Qigang, on behalf of the Hong Kong government, first published a 3,000-word long article to denounce it, and asked Miami International and Messi to give an explanation and apologize.
The Chinese Football Association was also very quick to react to the incident, suspending cooperation with the Argentine Football Federation, while the sports bureaus in Hangzhou and Beijing also announced the cancellation of the Argentine team's trip to China in March.
It is worth noting that CCTV, as the leading boss of domestic TV media, also attaches great importance to this incident this time, and they deleted all the scenes related to Messi in the "World Football" program, and even Messi's endorsement of Guizhou in the weather forecast was replaced, so as to achieve full coverage of the blocking.
As TV fans, we do have a lot of complaints about some of CCTV's practices over the years, but we firmly support CCTV in dealing with Messi's affairs.
"Messi has been overestimated all his life"! If a foreign star dares to casually challenge the bottom line of morality on China's turf and casually ignore Chinese fans and even government agencies, he will not only hurt the Chinese fans as a group, but also disrespect our country.
In short, a player like Messi, such a person, no matter how good his football skills are and how big the traffic is, he should not become the sought after object of our people, CCTV's blocking is very well done, Messi is not wronged!
Of course, we welcome celebrities from all walks of life from all over the world to visit China, but we must have a moral bottom line and respect our people and country.