Lionel Messi hurt by penalty miss

Lionel Messi says it “hurts” after his penalty was saved during Argentina’s 1-1 draw with Iceland at the Soccer World Cup on Saturday.

The 30-year-old Barcelona star’s second-half spot-kick was easily stopped by opposition keeper Hannes Halldorsson with the score at 1-1.

Messi was looking to match the impact his old rival Cristiano Ronaldo has made so far with a sensational hat-trick against Spain on Friday night.

“It would have changed the script. It was the advantage,” he said.

“Obviously it hurts me to have missed the penalty. They would have opened a little more and we could have found more spaces.

“We have the bitterness of not being able to take the three points that we deserved. To start with winning is always important, now we have to think about Croatia.

“We will try to pass this quickly”.

Messi said Iceland’s tactic’s made it hard for his side claiming “they did not want to play” but admitted that Heimir Hallgrimsson’s team “closed well”.

The Argentina skipper has now missed four of the last seven penalties that he has taken for club and country combined.

He continued to try for a way through against Iceland with 11 attempted shots, the most he’s ever tried in a World Cup game, but was left frustrated.

Argentina coach Jorge Sampaoli dismissed his star player’s penalty set-back as a “statistic” and praised his attitude in a difficult game.

“To evaluate and characterise Lionel Messi’s work is difficult because it was an uncomfortable match for him,” he said.

“Iceland played very defensively, blocking all spaces but we did everything we could to win. Leo is very committed to Argentina.

“We always come to win so that’s why there is a certain amount of frustration.”

Argentina face Croatia next on Thursday at the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium.

Meanwhile, Iceland goalkeeper Hannes Halldorsson revealed on Saturday how he worked on psyching out Argentine superstar Messi to make a penalty save that sealed a 1-1 draw with the footballing superpower.

Halldorsson was the hero when he palmed away Messi’s spot kick in the 63rd minute, correctly gambling that the Barcelona talisman would shoot to his right.

The man-of-the-match described the moment, which kept the score level at 1-1, as “a dream come true” but also said it was the result of painstaking research into the five-time world player of the year.

“I did some homework because I knew this was a situation that could come up. It was a long shot but it happened,” he said after the tie at Moscow’s Spartak Stadium.

“I looked at a lot of penalties from Messi and I also looked at how I’ve been behaving during the last couple of penalties.

“I tried to get in their minds, so they’d be thinking about me. I had a good feeling he’d go this way today.”

He said the draw felt like a win for Iceland, who are making their first World Cup appearance but famously eliminated England at Euro 2016 to reach the quarter-finals.

Halldorsson said the Argentina result was similar to Iceland’s draw with Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal at those championships because it provided a springboard to make it to the knock-out phase.

“We were playing against one of the best teams in the world who had the best player in the world,” he said.

“It’s especially important for us because it helped us get a point, which is important for us to reach our goal to get out of the group.”

Iceland’s next opponents are Nigeria in Volgograd on Friday. — AFP.