Lionel Messi has said he has "quite a few doubts" about how much longer he will continue playing football, in an emotional tribute to his father, Jorge, who died last week aged 68 after a long illness. Jorge had been his agent since he was 14, a constant presence from his earliest days at Barcelona.
In the message, posted on Instagram, Messi wrote: "I don't know what I'm going to do without you. I don't know how to move forward. I only played football and now I have quite a few doubts about whether I'm going to keep doing it for much longer." He added: "You were by my side from the beginning; there was so little left until the end. Why couldn't you hold on just a little longer so we could finish it together?"
Messi, who captained Argentina to a 1-0 extra-time defeat by Spain in last month's World Cup final, said his father's declining health shaped his decision to play in the tournament at all. "You always asked me to play in the last World Cup and a few days before it started was when you got worse," he said. He was seen in tears after scoring in Argentina's opening win over Algeria, an emotion he later explained was "something unrelated to football" after "a few difficult, complicated days."
Despite his grief, Messi pledged to honour his father's memory through raising his own children. "I'm going to miss you so much, but you will always be present, especially in the upbringing of my children, because I will teach them and raise them the way you raised me," he said. A private funeral was held on Sunday at a cemetery in Perez, on the outskirts of Rosario.