After 8 long years, Lionel Messi’s Argentina will return to Bangladesh again to play a friendly match against Paraguay at the Bangabandhu National Stadium next month. The match is scheduled to be held on 18th of November and this was officially confirmed via Paraguay national football team’s verified twitter account yesterday.
That tweet from the Paraguay National Football team yesterday mentioned, there will be two matches of Paraguay that are scheduled to hold in Dhaka next month. In the first match on 15th of November, Paraguay will face another Latin American country Venezuela. Then, on the 18th of November they will confront Argentina.
That match will also likely see the return of Argentina superstar Lionel Messi, as his three-month ban in international football for criticizing the referee during Copa America will be over. This news was confirmed by a reliable Argentine news agency. According to that agency, Messi will likely return in the national team roster ahead of the upcoming friendly matches against the arch-rivals Brazil and Paraguay respectively in Asia on November.
Argentina will play against Brazil in Saudi Arabia on November 15 before travelling to Bangladesh for the match against Paraguay three days later. However, it is still not certain whether the Argentinian skipper Messi would be playing in the match in Dhaka. Apart of Messi there are other superstar players in all the three teams, who play in Europe’s elite leagues. Therefore, even if Messi do not play, Bangabandhu National Stadium is set to be graced by the feet of some top players in world football at the moment, with the likes of Dybala, Aguero, Di Maria of Argentina are just few examples.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) top officials claimed the matches are not yet certain and there has been talks of hosting high-profile international matches later this year as build-up to celebration of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s birth centenary next year.
Abu Nayeem Shohag, general secretary of BFF, stated that talks are on primary stage and everything will be confirmed after the green signal from the government regarding the arrangement of funds and security.
“We have been working to arrange sme high-caliber international matches for quite some time now. At the moment, there is a chance that these matches will take place in Dhaka. However, nothing is certain yet,” Shohag said.
“There are also other issues such as funding and security involved with the matches. If those issues are solved, hosting these matches are very likely. We are discussing these aspects with the government and everything will be confirmed within two weeks,” Shohag concluded.
The last time Argentina came in Bangladesh was back in 2011 where they faced Nigeria in a friendly match.
On September 6, 2011, Argentina led my Messi played against Nigeria at Bangabandhu National Football Stadium and won that match by 3-1.