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Leipzig, Nov 02 (AFP): Argentinian superstar Lionel Messi will miss Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League clash with RB Leipzig due to injury, his club confirmed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old six-time Ballon d’Or winner has a problem with his left hamstring and a painful knee, PSG said, and sits out Wednesday’s match away to Leipzig.<\/p>\n
“If you have a player like Messi in your team, you are automatically stronger,” replied teammate Georginio Wijnaldum when asked if Messi would be missed.<\/p>\n
The Argentinian scored two second-half goals as PSG fought back to beat Leipzig 3-2 when the sides met in Paris two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
“Every game has it\u2019s own difficulties, we know tomorrow will be tough as Leipzig are a good team. We hope Messi will be back soon,” said PSG coach Mauricio Pochettino.<\/p>\n
Messi went off at half-time of PSG’s 2-1 Ligue 1 victory over Lille last Friday and missed training on Monday.<\/p>\n
Even without the four-time Champions League winner, Leipzig coach Jesse Marsch knows PSG will still present his side with “another difficult task” with Kylian Mbappe poised to return to the visitors’ line-up.<\/p>\n
PSG top their Champions League group with seven points after three matches, a point ahead of last season’s beaten finalists Manchester City whilst Leipzig are yet to get off the mark after three defeats.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, having taken the lead in Paris two weeks ago, Leipzig are bullish about their chances against a PSG team including Mbappe and Brazil star Neymar.<\/p>\n
“The game in Paris was important for us, because it showed we can deliver a good performance and understand we can do it away from home,” added Marsch.<\/p>\n
“We totally believe in our chance, if we get three points with a big win then it would give us a lot of momentum.”<\/p>\n
However, a fourth straight defeat in Europe would end Leipzig’s last 16 hopes.<\/p>\n
PSG are also missing influential midfielder Marco Verratti while Messi may also be a doubt for Saturday’s Ligue 1 clash between table-toppers PSG and strugglers Bordeaux.<\/p>\n
He is due to then join up with his national squad for two World Cup qualifiers against Uruguay and Brazil.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s game will be the third match that Messi has missed this season due to injury, having sat out two Ligue 1 matches at the end of September.<\/p>\n
Messi has made a low-key start to his spell at the French giants since arriving from Barcelona in August.<\/p>\n
However, he produced one of his better performances in the home win over Leipzig, scoring a double including the winner from the penalty spot.<\/p>\n
He said when he ended almost two decades at Barcelona a major reason for joining PSG was to win a fifth Champions League trophy.<\/p>\n
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Leipzig, Nov 02 (AFP): Argentinian superstar Lionel Messi will miss Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League clash with RB Leipzig due to injury, his club confirmed on Tuesday. The 34-year-old six-time Ballon d’Or winner has a problem with his left hamstring and a painful knee, PSG said, and sits out Wednesday’s match away to Leipzig. “If you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-175827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}