The World Cup Golden Ball award was no consolation for Barcelona forward Lionel Messi after Argentina were beaten in the World Cup final.
Messi was named the tournament’s best player and was presented with his prize immediately after La Albiceleste had lost to Germany after extra time.
The Argentina captain told reporters after the match that his only target was to win the World Cup, and anything else is an irrelevance.
“Right now I don’t care about the prize. I don’t care about anything. I wanted to take Argentina to the World Cup for all the people,” AS reports Messi as saying.
“We deserved it a bit more after the game we played. It’s very painful to lose the way we did because we were near penalties.
“I believe this World Cup deserved another final because we had chances.
“We reached the final, while other Argentinas didn’t get past the quarter-finals. But we’re disappointed not to have won this game. There’s a lot of anger.
“While they had control of the ball I think we had the clearer chances. We weren’t lucky enough to be able to take them but I believe our chances were clear.
“We had three clear chances – mine [Gonzalo Higuain’s] and Rodrigo Palacio, but we couldn’t get it. Now we have to go forward.”
