There will be no bow on football\u2019s greatest stage for one of history\u2019s great goalscorers. We\u2019re about to find out how his career winds down<\/p>\n
While soccer\u2019s calendar offers few moments of respite, the World Cup doubles as a time for referendums on the legacies of great players. Lionel Messi, Luka Modri\u0107 and Cristiano Ronaldo approach this summer\u2019s tournament expecting it to be their final turn on their sport\u2019s biggest stage. Kevin De Bruyne and Casemiro could clarify their complicated international careers in North America; Neymar may not get the same chance<\/a>.<\/p>\n Missing a sendoff like this may be a bit more relatable to the life that we mortals endure. Indeed, there\u2019s no crueler way for an international career to end than tripping at the final hurdle of World Cup qualification.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There will be no bow on football\u2019s greatest stage for one of history\u2019s great goalscorers. We\u2019re about to find out how his career winds down While soccer\u2019s calendar offers few moments of respite, the World Cup doubles as a time for referendums on the legacies of great players. Lionel Messi, Luka Modri\u0107 and Cristiano Ronaldo … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}