Lionel Messi will miss this weekend’s La Liga match at home to RCD Mallorca with a right hamstring injury and will return to action depending on the speed of his recovery, Barcelona said after tests yesterday.
The World Player of the Year limped off at halftime in Barca’s 2-2 Champions League quarter-final first-leg draw away to Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday and is doubtful for the return leg at the Camp Nou on Wednesday next week.
Local media reports had said the Argentine striker would be out of action for about three weeks.
Photo: AFP
“I will return soon, thankfully it was not so serious.” Messi said on his Facebook page. “We are so sorry for Masche [Javier Mascherano], we offer him our full support and hope he returns as soon as possible.”
His Argentine teammate, defender Mascherano, was carried off on a stretcher in Paris and has been ruled out for six weeks with knee ligament damage.
Messi is Barca’s leading scorer, with eight goals in the Champions League and 43 in La Liga this season, and is an ever-present figure on the side.
Photo: AFP
He is rarely rested and has been extraordinarily resilient to injury. The last time he was sidelined with a muscle injury was in November 2009 when he was out of action for a week, Barca said.
Barcelona host relegation-threatened Mallorca on Saturday, holding a 13-point lead over Real Madrid with nine games left to play.
Messi’s absence will bring an end to his latest feat of netting goals in 19 successive league matches against every team in La Liga.
Barca are still on track for a sixth consecutive Champions League semi-final appearance despite the injuries and having conceded a last-gasp goal by Blaise Matuidi.
The 2009 and 2011 champions went in front seven minutes before halftime when Dani Alves produced an exquisite pass with the outside of his right boot straight into the path of Messi, who drove the ball in with his left foot from an acute angle.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic gave PSG a lifeline when he equalized, even though he looked offside before a header from Thiago Silva rebounded to the Swedish striker off the post in the 79th minute.
Xavi calmly restored title favorites Barca’s advantage from the penalty spot after goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu rushed off his line in the 89th minute and brought down Alexis Sanchez.
Matuidi then struck with the last kick of the game when his long-range shot eluded the outstretched fingers of keeper ’Victor Valdes.
“The referee [German Wolfgang Stark] made some questionable calls,” Barca assistant manager Jordi Roura told reporters after the quarter-final tie. “It’s a good result, but it comes at a high price.”
David Beckham became the first British player to appear for four different clubs in the Champions League when he was named in PSG’s starting lineup.
The former England captain did well before being taken off midway through the second half.
“I think we deserved a draw tonight,” Beckham said. “There’s no reason why we can’t go there and get a result.”
PSG, unbeaten at home in all competitions since Nov. 17, went for Barca’s throat in the opening stages, but were not rewarded for their efforts.
Ancelotti said he could not fault his team’s performance, but bemoaned Starks’ decision to award the visitors a late penalty and admitted that the result leaves his team with a lot to do in the return.
“We played very well in the first half, but the two goals we conceded were gifts. The first goal was a gift to Messi on the edge of the box and the second was a gift by the referee,” he said.
“I don’t think it was a penalty, I think [Alexis] Sanchez was looking for the contact from [goalkeeper Salvatore] Sirigu,” Ancelotti said.
“We have experience of him, because he dived when we played them in a friendly in August. I am not happy with the result,” he added, although he said he believes his team can win the return.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier