Lionel Messi achieved the one thing that evaded him all through his career by winning the World Cup with Argentina a few months ago.
In doing so, the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner ensured that he had won every single major competition in which he had taken part during his career.
Indeed, Leo has won the World Cup and Copa America with Argentina. He won the La Liga, Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup with Argentina.
He even won Ligue 1 as part of PSG in his debut campaign. With that being said, Leo hasn’t won every single possible competition in his career so far.
Since arriving at PSG, he has taken part in Ligue 1 and the Champions League – as well as the Coupe de France (France FA Cup) with them.
He wasn’t able to help his side win the Coupe de France last season, with PSG losing in the Round of 16 to runners-up Nice.
Leo will hope to ensure fate doesn’t repeat itself when PSG face arch-rivals Marseille in a heated Round of 16 encounters.
But he will have to follow a weird rule to participate in the game. The Coupe de France has a strict set of rules that must be implemented and followed by every team to participate in their games.
Coupe de France’s weird jersey rules
As per the rules, teams that play in the Round of 16 and quarter-finals of the Coupe de France must ensure their players only wear shirts with numbers from 1-11.
This is implemented to keep the ‘traditions’ alive, as football many decades ago only allowed those numbers to be on the back of jerseys.
Incidentally, Messi wears the no.30 shirt at PSG ever since arriving at the club – as he decided to move away from his iconic no.10 to try something different.
However, he will need to change his shirt number for at least this match in order to play in it.
Last season, Leo started in the loss to Nice and ended up wearing the no.10 jersey at the club level once again.
He was able to do so due to the unavailability of Neymar, who wears the prestigious number at the club.
But with Neymar now available and ready to play against his rival side, PSG could be forced to make some major changes.
Will Leo wear no.10 again?
Incidentally, Neymar did reportedly offer Leo to take the no.10 jersey from him when he arrived at PSG in 2021.
But Messi graciously declined the kind offer as he did not want to take that from his good friend. For this upcoming game, however, that might change.
While nothing has been confirmed yet, Messi might opt to wear the no.10 kit again and have Neymar change his number for the game.
The Brazilian forward can wear the no.11 kit, which is currently vacant at PSG. Moreover, the no.9 kit is also up for grabs and will need to be occupied by some player for this game.
Even Gianluigi Donnarumma, who dons the no.99 kit, will need to wear the no.1 shirt to start this game as goalkeeper. He actually did that in the game against Nice last season, which PSG ended up losing in penalties.
The Coupe de France’s jersey rules are definitely strange and even more strict for the initial rounds. For the 7th and 8th rounds of the tournament, participating teams are only allowed to wear five specific colours.
The home team in these rounds must wear either white or red kits – while the away team must choose from blue, yellow and green.
PSG didn’t have to play those rounds, so they were able to bypass these rules. But Messi & co will need to tweak their shirt numbers for the Marseille game – which could see Leo wearing his iconic no.10 kit once again.
