The Argentina captain had a lengthy break after leading his country to win the World Cup and celebrating in Argentina with his family. Previous reports suggested that Messi would resume training on January 3, and Galtier confirmed this with his comments on Tuesday.
He said: “He [Messi] had to return to Argentina for the celebrations, the receptions, and we decided that he was going to be off until January 1st. And so he will come and join us, either on the 2nd or the 3rd, to be able to resume competition with us, when he will have had between 13 and 14 days of recovery.”
Galtier also addressed rumours of a feud between Messi and Kylian Mbappe, who was the subject of taunts by Argentina players after the World Cup final. He said: “There is no reason to mix everything up in the relationship between Kylian and Leo,” Galtier said. Kylian has a very good attitude having lost the World Cup.
“When you lose a World Cup final, you have a reason to be very, very disappointed. He was very disappointed, but he knew how to go on and behave, and had a lot of class to congratulate Leo.”
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
