Lionel Messi is on his way back to Argentina less than 24 hours after guiding his team to World Cup triumph and cementing his place in football history.
The 35-year-old used social media to alert his 399 million followers that the Alibiceleste are on their way by posing with football’s most prized trophy while sitting on an aircraft wearing his national team training uniform. His team-mate and fellow goal-scorer during the final Angel Di Maria uploaded a similar image.
In what was possibly the most exciting World Cup final of all time, Argentina played out a 3-3 draw with France that saw two of the finest on the globe in Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe go head to head on the largest stage of all.
The answer is yes. The clash went to penalties, with both Messi and Mbappe scoring in the shoot-out. Following misses from Ousmane Dembele and Aurelien Tchouameni, Gonzalo Montiel stepped up to take the game-winning penalty and send Argentine supporters throughout the world into raptures as Lionel Scaloni‘s side won their third World Cup.
Nicolas Otamendi maintained the celebratory plane-picture trend, uploading a photo of himself beaming from ear to ear while proudly holding the trophy. Late Friday night, the former Manchester City centre-back also turned to Instagram to upload a picture of him in what looked to be a hotel room kissing the World Cup.
While emotions were still running high late on Sunday evening, Messi uploaded a sequence of images of him holding the one trophy that had escaped him for so long alongside a heartfelt, lengthy statement.
