{"id":4659,"date":"2014-08-25T05:35:53","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T05:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=4659"},"modified":"2014-08-25T05:35:53","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T05:35:53","slug":"leo-messi-scores-twice-in-barcelonas-first-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/leo-messi-scores-twice-in-barcelonas-first-season-opener\/","title":{"rendered":"Leo Messi Scores Twice in Barcelona&#8217;s First Season Opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was business as usual for Leo Messi as he scored a double on the first day of the season for the fourth consecutive campaign. Barcelona won their first game 3-0 against Elche despite Javier Mascherano\u2019s red card just before the break.<\/p>\n<p>Messi\u2019s characteristic brace was achieved without the suspended Luis Suarez and the injured Neymar but he had more than enough help from Madrid born youngster Munir El Hadaddi.<\/p>\n<p>The young striker will not be 19 until September 1 but already has Bar\u00e7a fans predicting a big future \u2013 if he can stay in the side when Neymar and Suarez return.<\/p>\n<p>Barcelona have now scored 26 goals in their last six opening matches and not since 2008 have they been beaten on the opening day.<\/p>\n<p>That front three of Munir, Rafinha and Messi was a clean sweep for the club\u2019s La Masia youth academy as Barcelona kicked-off the season with the entire bench and six of the starters products of its youth system.G<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was business as usual for Leo Messi as he scored a double on the first day of the season for the fourth consecutive campaign. Barcelona won their first game 3-0 against Elche despite Javier Mascherano\u2019s red card just before the break. Messi\u2019s characteristic brace was achieved without the suspended Luis Suarez and the injured [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,81],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4661,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659\/revisions\/4661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}