Lionel Messi suffered an injury on his first start of the season in Barcelona’s narrow win over Villarreal at the Nou Camp.<\/p>\n
Messi, who had recovered from a calf injury to feature, was replaced at the start of the second half after suffering a thigh problem.<\/p>\n
The Argentine, making his 400th La Liga start, provided the corner for Antoine Griezmann to head home off the bar before Arthur made it 2-0.<\/p>\n
After the game, Barca boss Ernesto Valverde described Messi’s injury as a “small problem in the adductor”.<\/p>\n
“When something happens to Messi, everyone stops, not only on the field, but in the stands as well,” he said.<\/p>\n
“As a precaution we have decided not to risk it. In theory, it is nothing more but we will see tomorrow how it is.”<\/p>\n
Although far from their fluent best, Barcelona climbed four places up the table to fourth in La Liga to help ease the pressure on Valverde after a poor start to the season.<\/p>\n
After his injury, the Barca captain received treatment on the edge of the pitch before carrying on until half-time.<\/p>\n
The forward was replaced by French striker Ousmane Dembele at the start of the second half.
\nElsewhere, newly promoted Granada went top of La Liga – level on points with Athletic Bilbao and Real Madrid – after drawing 1-1 at Real Valladolid.<\/p>\n
Real Madrid entertain Osasuna on Wednesday (20:00 BST) while Bilbao are at bottom club Leganes (18:00 BST).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi suffered an injury on his first start of the season in Barcelona’s narrow win over Villarreal at the Nou Camp. Messi, who had recovered from a calf injury to feature, was replaced at the start of the second half after suffering a thigh problem. The Argentine, making his 400th La Liga start, provided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1351,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions\/1351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}