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The Sports Minister of Kerala, V. Abdurahiman stated that the Argentina football team is willing to play a couple of friendlies in the Indian state in October 2025. When the reporters asked him about whether the Argentine captain Lionel Messi, who is going to be 38 years old then, will travel with the national team, he remarked in the affirmative.
Notably, the announcement came after the officials from Kerala and Argentina had a virtual meeting, a couple of weeks after the Argentine Football Association (AFA) informed them about their readiness to play in response to their invitation from last year. In the virtual meeting, apart from V. Abdurahiman, the Kerala Secretary of Sports Pranab Jyothinath, Kerala Football Association (KFA) President Nawaz Meeran were present in the esteemed company of AFA’s Head of International Relations, Pablo Diaz.
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AFA were willing to play one friendly game in July of this year, but as per V. Abdurahiman, they looked at a different time of the year citing the weather. He was quoted as saying on a Facebook post, “We informed them about the difficulty in hosting (the game) since it would be monsoon here. So they agreed to play in October 2025.”
V Abdurahim also spoke about the epic fandom of Kerala fans for the Argentina football team during the FIFA World Cup 2022, which saw Lionel Messi lift the coveted trophy for the very first time in his career in Qatar. “They accepted the invitation from Kerala whose fans had turned our state into a sea of blue during the Qatar World Cup,” he added.
The Sports Minister also understood the challenge in hosting a friendly of such magnitude, and said, “Although organising these friendlies will be a big task, it will be the best gift to the football lovers of Kerala and the biggest motivation for our players.”
"The AFA expressed interest in playing an active role in the development of football in Kerala. They also expressed interest in training 5,000 young footballers by cooperating with the Goal football training project of the Kerala government, ” he concluded his post on Facebook.
