Messi speaks out: "it's customary to lie about me"

"It has become normal, almost customary to lie, hit out at me, say things about me, to criticise me when I play for Argentina, when I don't play for Argentina, continuously. And the truth is it annoys be a bit", Messi stated in statements given to the Argentine radio station 'Club 947'.

The five time Ballon D'Or champion expressed that "people believe what is said" and for that reason he decided to talk after a complicated week, in which he returned to the national squad nine months after his last appearance.

His long-awaited return culminated with a 3-1 defeat to Venezuela in a friendly in Madrid in which Messi started and played the full 90 minutes. After which he left the camp with injury problems.

In Argentina, the media is criticising the heaviness of the defeat against Venezuela, as well as Messi's absence from the second encounter, and questioned the extent of the injury and Messi's commitment to his country.

"I've had a groin injury since before the December break, I have trained very little," said Messi, ahead of a decisive stage of the season in which he hopes to win titles in the league, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League.

The Barcelona footballer said that "nothing had been arranged beforehand" with coach Lionel Scaloni, to rest the second game against Morocco, and that he wanted to play "both".

Moreover, this was the first time that the Argentine had spoken about the 2018 Russia World Cup, in which Argentina were knocked out by France in the quarter-finals.

"It was difficult to speak again because it was a very tough blow, one of the worst that I had to be part of in the national team, everything went wrong from the beginning," he said.

Messi recalled that after the defeat in the second match against Croatia they all came together "as do the big groups" because if they did not say goodbye to the World Cup: "it was going to be one of the biggest failures in the history of that squad".

After the elimination at the hands of the French, he only thought about locking himself away and "mourning alone" with his family.

The Argentine star defended his generation, questioned in their home country about having not won a single title, and he considered them to have been "poorly treated" like no other previous generation in Argentina.

"We reached a world final, we reached two Copa América finals and we have always had a problem with the media," he said.