Argentina defeated Paraguay 1-0 at the Monumental Stadium in the third match of the third day of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers.
Leo Messi, who came on in the second half (in the 52nd minute he replaced Julian Alvarez), was spat at by Antonio Sanabria, a former Barcelona player who currently plays for Torino.
In the 85th minute Messi and Sanabria had a scuffle that ended with the Paraguayan spitting at the back of the Argentinean… it passed close to Leo‘s body and that the Brazilian referee Raphael Claus did not see.
Gustavo Gomez, a Paraguayan soccer player, told Messi to “take it easy” so that things would not escalate.
“The truth is that I didn’t see it. They told me in the locker room that one of them had spit on me. The truth is I don’t even know who this guy is. I didn’t see him. They only told me. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it because he’s going to be talked about everywhere and it’s worse. It’s going to become known, so it’s better to leave it there,” Messi told the press after the match about his incident with Sanabria.
Messi had another run-in with Richard Sanchez.
Regarding his participation in the match Messi explained that “I am happy to be able to add minutes and to be able to play with the National Team. I feel good, I was able to add training sessions and minutes, I had played very little in my club, but today I played again and little by little I felt good. It is beautiful every time we play at home. I am also happy with the way the match turned out”.
Antonio Sanabria: Nothing happened with Messi. It seems that I spit on him but no
For his part, Sanabria wanted to play down the apparent spitting at Messi, and even denied it.
“I was looking at the image. It looks like I spit it out, but no, nothing to see. It was far away. Nothing happened with Messi. It looks like I spit on him, but nothing to do with it, it was far away. I totally deny it,” said Sanabria on TyC Sports.
Toni Sanabria coincided with Leo Messi at Barcelona… and they took a picture together
Arnaldo Antonio Sanabria Ayala was born in San Lorenzo (Paraguay) on March 4, 1996.
In 2008 Toni Sanabria moved to Sitges (Spain) and in June 2009 he joined the youth academy of Barcelona (club where he coincided with Leo Messi), making his debut with Barcelona B in 2013 still at youth age.