ARGENTINA have suffered a major World Cup scare as Lionel Messi missed training today.
The South American nation come into the tournament full of hope and on the back of a 35-match unbeaten run.
But the whole country will be sat nervously awaiting an update on their talisman after the 35-year-old failed to appear alongside his team-mates for practice this afternoon.
Sky Sports started the doubts when reporting from Argentina’s training session as they stated: “We haven’t seen Lionel Messi yet.
“He might be joining up later, he might be on a different programme to everyone else.
“But so far we haven’t been able to spot him.”
Messi will be desperate to add the one prize that has so far evaded him by firing Argentina to World Cup glory in Qatar.
He suffered heartbreak in the 2014 World Cup Final but he did help them to beat Brazil to claim the Copa America last year.
Argentina stretched their unbeaten run to 35 matches last night with a 5-0 win over United Arab Emirates in Dubai and can equal Italy’s record by avoiding defeat to the Saudi’s.
But manager Lionel Scaloni revealed earlier this week that a number of his men are struggling.
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He said that Cristian Romero, Nicholas Gonzalez, Paulo Dybala and Alejandro Gomez are all suffering with injuries.
And he hinted that he could be considering making some changes ahead of the tournament’s start next week.
He said: “We have days to decide.
“There are some players who are physically troubled. The truth is that we are not sure that these 26 players are all in the squad, luckily, we have days to decide if we have to make any modifications.”
Argentina begin their World Cup campaign with a clash against Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
They then take on Mexico before facing Poland in their final Group C clash on Wednesday 30 November.
