London's "Arsenal" coach Arsene Wenger is happy that Lionel Messi will be going to next year's World Cup and believes that every fan should feel the same way.
Argentina's national team hopes were hanging by a thread at one point, but the "Barcelona" star scored a hat-trick in the final qualifying match against Ecuador and extended his compatriots' ticket to Russia.
There they will seek to improve their performance in Brazil, where they lost to the Germans in the final after extra time.
"I personally am very happy (to see Messi at the World Cup - ed.)", Wenger told Arsenal Player.
"If you love football, you love watching Messi. If you love football, you also love Argentina."
"They always have top-class attacking players and can boast plenty of talent. Overall, I would say it would have been sad if Argentina had not qualified for the World Cup."
"In Europe, we are a bit spoiled, because we have 13 places in the World Cup. We play against smaller teams in smaller groups, so the danger is not as great, except for the group of the Netherlands, which was quite strong. France and Sweden were there, so it was somewhat tough, but most qualification groups are not very difficult."
"In South America, there are 10 teams and only four go directly through. The fifth team has to go through playoffs, so to me that seems much more difficult."
"Also, beating a South American team is never easy. Everyone has a hard time traveling to Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, Brazil, or Chile."
"There are many tough matches. This is without a doubt the hardest place to advance."
In the final ranking of 10 teams, Argentina finished in third place. They were behind Brazil and Uruguay.
