Andre Pirlo throws a challenge to Messi to establish his monarchy

Italian legend Pirlo throws a challenge to Messi

XtraTime Web Desk: Lionel Messi has to win the World Cup for his national team Argentina to claim to be the best player, according to Italy legend Andrea Pirlo.

One of the football’s biggest debates over the past decade has been wheatear Messi is superior to Argentine compatriot Diego Maradona.

Maradona won the World Cup single handedly in the 1986. Pirlo believes that Messi has so many records for Bercelona and won five Ballons d’Or but, can’t overtake Maradona until he lifts the football’s biggest prize.



“It will be important for both Messi himself and for Argentina to win the World Cup in Russia,” Pirlo told.

“Messi is always compared to Maradona but he needs to win the World Cup because if you don’t win the World Cup you can’t be up there with the very best.”

Argentina thrashed 6-1 by Spain in a recent friendly and had their last game against Israel cancelled.

“Argentina have had the time now to improve and find the right players for the World Cup and I think they are going to do well in Russia despite the big loss they had against Spain,” the Italian stated.

“Argentina has a lot of good players and if their top players perform they are going to do well.”

Talking about Italy’s disappointing show against Uruguay in the World Cup in the 2014 World Cup he said, “After the game, the Italy players and myself were just depressed by the result. The biting incident was something else but we were more down because we had lost and gone out of the World Cup.

“It was an incident that can happen on the pitch and in this case the referee didn’t see it.”



Talking about the favorite player in this World Cup the Italian legend said, ““My favourite England player is Harry Kane He’s really good and powerful, he’s scored so many goals in the last years and he is one of the players I am going to follow closely at the World Cup.”

“As Italy is not there, I will not be supporting any team in particular. I’m going to watch all the games but I’m not going to support any teams,” he concluded.