Guinea, the last ticket to Paris: the soccer scene and the big question about big figures

Guinea beat Indonesia 1-0 in the playoff between teams from Africa and Asia and thus completed the men’s soccer groups for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Ilaix Moriba, midfielder for Getafe in Spain, converted the only goal of the match played in the French town of Clairefontaine and that allowed Guinea to return to the Olympic Games after Mexico 1968.

The African national team will share Group A with France, the United States and New Zealand, with which he will debut on July 24 in Nice. The other cities that will host this area will be Marseille and Saint-Étienne.

Group B will consist of Argentina, Morocco, Ukraine and Iraq; Group C will include Spain, Egypt, Uzbekistan and the Dominican Republic, while Group D will include Japan, Mali, Paraguay and Israel.

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Félicitations à la Guinée qui obtient le dernier quota pour le tournoi olympique de football masculin des Jeux Olympiques de #Paris2024 🇬🇳

La Guinée rejoint la France, les États-Unis d’Amérique et la Nouvelle-Zélande dans le groupe A ⚽️

Les Jeux Olympiques s’invitent à… pic.twitter.com/Po8JbypeMp

— Paris 2024 (@Paris2024) May 9, 2024

Kylian Mbappé vs Lionel Messi, the dream of seeing the duel again in Paris 2024

All the qualifiers have been confirmed, now the big question to be revealed is which figures will be present at the Olympic Games and the great enthusiasm for the organizer is to be able to count on Kylian Mbappé.” I have put maximum pressure on what they say will be the new club,” Emmanuel Macron, president of France, said in the last few hours when asked by comedian Paul de Saint Sernin. The president did not specify who he spoke to.

Mbappé will not continue at PSG and the mystery about his future is an obstacle to negotiating his presence at the Olympic Games. Real Madrid appears to be the great candidate to stay with the French star and the Spanish club has already announced that it will not give up its international players for Paris 2024, something that is not mandatory.

“I have always said that they are special to me and I would like to be there, but the final decision does not belong to me. It’s all in someone else’s hands. I don’t have any news about whether they’re going to let me go. If I go it will be a dream. If not, I’ll accept it,” Mbappé explained during a press conference with Les Bleus last March.

The great dream of many is to be able to see a final between Mbappé and Lionel Messi, teammates in PSG and who faced each other in the definition of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar with a victory for the Argentine star in the penalty shootout after both shone in the emotional 3-3 tie.

Messi had a talk with Javier Mascherano (he will be the coach of Argentina) and although he has not yet ruled out his presence in Paris 2024, it seems difficult considering that a few weeks before he will play the Copa América in the United States (it will end on July 14, 10 days before his debut in the Olympic Games). Leo, currently at Inter Miami, knows what it’s like to be an Olympic champion because he was part of the squad that was established in Beijing 2008.

If Messi is not present, Mascherano aspires to be able to count on some of these world champions among the three over 23 years of age allowed by the regulations: Emiliano Martínez, Nicolás Otamendi, Cristian Romero, Lautaro Martínez or Julián Alvarez.

Brazil, champion in Tokyo 2020, will be the biggest absentee in the Olympic Games because it did not win one of the two places awarded in the Pre-Olympic Qualifying Championship in South America (Paraguay was the other qualifier). The first two in each group will qualify for the quarterfinals, scheduled for August 2, while three days later the semifinals will be played. The bronze medal will be decided on August 8 in Nantes and the next day the final for the gold medal will be played in the Parc des Princes in Paris.