Messi returned to training on the field and is working against the clock to be on Thursday against Ecuador

Lionel Messi works against the clock to be available next Thursday in front of Ecuador in the quarterfinals of the America Cup. The captain of the Argentine National Team six days ago he suffered a severe contracture in the right adductor before Chile which caused a shock, but which did not prevent him from continuing to play – and at a good level – in the 2-0 victory at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The carrot is the game in Houstonwhere the albiceleste delegation will arrive this Monday afternoon, after having trained and had lunch in Miami.

Messi was present in practice at Florida International University (FIU, according to its acronym in English) and the novelty was that he was seen again on the playing field, where the Scaloneta met again after the Sunday off that the coaching staff headed by Lionel Scaloni gave him to rest and be able to carry out activities with their families present in the city.

Under intense heat, it was a training session in which 10, as he learned Clarionfirst had a kinesiology session, just like the previous days, and Then he joined his colleagues for field work. In fact, on Sunday, when the entire team had the time to return to the hotel at 7:30 p.m., Messi showed up about two hours early, to work thinking about recovery.

How is Messi? “The evaluation will be day by day,” Walter Samuel, one of the Pujato coach’s assistants and who was on the edge of the lime line last Saturday at the Hard Rock stadium, anticipated in a press conference. The thing is that after the initial studies as soon as the match against Chile ended and the complementary ones carried out once the area had subsided, there was optimism.

But the countdown doesn’t stop and there is no person who knows more how he feels than Messi himself. Was intense kinesiology worknot only by the Selection working group headed by Luis Garcia -who massaged him in that first half at MetLife Stadium-, but also by a professional who usually treats him personally since his arrival at Inter Miami.

The objective, technically, is to ‘break’ the hardness of the contracture, which is – by definition – a contraction of muscle fibers that cannot relax on their own. Then, with strong massages that often cause difficulty walking due to pain – as was seen while Leo was walking between the gym and the playing field in training on Friday – an attempt is made to drain the affected area.

“Well well”, responded Messi himself when he walked through the labyrinth of the mixed zone of the Hard Rock stadium, minutes after the 2-0 victory against Peru that allowed him to win group A with an ideal score, something that had not happened in previous major tournaments. of the Scaloni Era. Leo watched the game from the substitutes’ bench and even signed a form, but it was never in his mind – nor in that of the coaching staff – that he would take the field. In fact, he was wearing sneakers and shorts of a different color than the ones the players had on the field.

But we must not lose sight of the fact that Leo is 37 years old and the recovery times for discomfort are different from other times. hThere is an evolution, slight, but evolution nonetheless. It is the hope of the fans, his teammates and the coaching staff, but also a lot of restraint in the words to use. There are still four days left until the battle of Houston and Argentina hopes not to have a problem.