Lionel Messi opened the scoring as Argentina thumped neighbors Uruguay 3-0 in an entertaining World Cup qualifier on Sunday.

Goals from Rodrigo De Paul and Lautaro Martinez rounded off a successful night for Lionel Scaloni’s team in Buenos Aires as they maintained their unbeaten start to the qualification campaign and closed the gap at the top of the single South American table to six points behind Brazil, who drew 0-0 with Colombia.

“We played a great match, I think we’re improving a lot,” said Messi. “It was a tough match and we had to win it.

“Uruguay sit back and are dangerous. Once we scored the first goal we started to find spaces and many appeared.”

Continue reading this article on SportsDesk, the sports website of the Times of Malta

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.