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Messi Scores 2 in Argentina’s World Cup Qualifying Win Over Peru; Brazil’s Neymar Injured 

Lionel Messi of Argentina celebrates a goal during a CONMEBOL FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifier match between Peru and Argentina at the National Stadium in Lima, Peru, 17 October 2023. (EPA)
Lionel Messi of Argentina celebrates a goal during a CONMEBOL FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifier match between Peru and Argentina at the National Stadium in Lima, Peru, 17 October 2023. (EPA)
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Messi Scores 2 in Argentina’s World Cup Qualifying Win Over Peru; Brazil’s Neymar Injured 

Lionel Messi of Argentina celebrates a goal during a CONMEBOL FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifier match between Peru and Argentina at the National Stadium in Lima, Peru, 17 October 2023. (EPA)
Lionel Messi of Argentina celebrates a goal during a CONMEBOL FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifier match between Peru and Argentina at the National Stadium in Lima, Peru, 17 October 2023. (EPA)

Lionel Messi scored twice in Argentina's 2-0 win at Peru in a World Cup qualifier on Tuesday, playing the entire match for his national team. The 36-year-old appeared fit after he was sidelined for several matches with his club Inter Miami because of muscular pain

Also Tuesday, Brazil — the archrival of the defending World Cup champion — took two serious blows at Uruguay. Brazil lost 2-0 to the hosts, its first defeat in 37 World Cup qualifying matches, and saw its star Neymar leave the Centenario Stadium in Montevideo on crutches with a left knee injury.

Elsewhere, Venezuela beat Chile 3-0. Yeferson Soteldo opened the scoring shortly before the break, Salomón Rondón added a goal in the 72nd minute, and Darwin Machis scored seven minutes later. Last week, Venezuela earlier had a 1-1 draw against Brazil.

Ecuador and Colombia had a scoreless draw, and Paraguay beat Bolivia 1-0 on Antonio Sanabria's goal in the 69th minute.

Argentina leads South American qualifying with 12 points in four matches. Uruguay, Brazil and Venezuela have seven points and are separated by goal difference. Colombia has six points, and Ecuador, Paraguay and Chile have four each. Peru has one point and Bolivia has zero.

The next World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada will include 48 teams, meaning direct entry for the top six teams in South America. The seventh-place team will contest an intercontinental playoff for a berth.

Two more rounds of South American World Cup qualifying will be played in November. Brazil and Argentina will face off at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Nov. 21.

ARGENTINA 2, PERU 0

Messi increased his total to 106 goals in 178 international appearances, moving within two of Iran's Ali Daei for second on the career list behind Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo at 127.

The defending World Cup champion never faced risks at Lima's National Stadium against a Peruvian team that has yet to score in four qualifying matches. Argentina's confident performance could be traced to Messi finally playing as a starter and appearing fully healthy.

The 36-year-old made it 1-0 after a counterattack in the 32nd minute. Enzo Fernández passed to Nico González on the left. A low cross found Messi at the edge of the box, and he shot it to the left angle of goalkeeper Pedro Gallese.

Messi scored again 10 minutes later after Enzo Fernández found him nearly at the same spot. Messi shot it on Gallese's right corner. He later had a goal disallowed for a low margin offside caught by video review in the 57th minute.

“Yes, we have a good group and a good environment in our dressing room and things are much easier. We enjoy being together and playing together,” Messi said. “After we won the World Cup we got confidence, we are more united and firm. I hope we can keep growing.”

Peruvian and Argentinian fans tried to invade the field after the match to hug Messi, who led the World Cup champions to their eighth straight victory since they won last year’s title in Qatar.

Last Thursday, Messi played for almost an entire half of Argentina's 1-0 victory over Paraguay.

URUGUAY 2, BRAZIL 0

After a slow start to the match in Montevideo, Maximiliano Araujo easily beat Marquinhos on the left flank and crossed the ball to Darwin Núnez, who headed it into the net.

The second half started with Brazil still doubtful and Uruguay ready to counterattack. One of those transitions was enough for a close-range finish by Nicolás de la Cruz in the 77th minute.

“In the short run we need to be realistic, we need to improve,” Brazil captain Casemiro said. “For Neymar to leave the match it is surely something serious. But I hope it isn’t at the end. He has had those injuries whenever he starts picking up his pace again, it is hard.”

With and without Neymar, Brazil had its worst performance under new coach Fernando Diniz, who will remain in the job at least until next year's Copa America.

Uruguay, now coached by Argentinian Marcelo Bielsa, had its first win against Brazil in 22 years.

“We had to play against a tough and direct rival,” Núñez said. “Today we made history.”

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Competing for Two: Pregnant Olympians Push the Boundaries of Possibility in Paris 

Paris 2024 Olympics - Archery - Women's Individual 1/32 Elimination Rnd - Invalides, Paris, France - July 30, 2024. Yaylagul Ramazanova of Azerbaijan in action. (Reuters)
Paris 2024 Olympics - Archery - Women's Individual 1/32 Elimination Rnd - Invalides, Paris, France - July 30, 2024. Yaylagul Ramazanova of Azerbaijan in action. (Reuters)
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Competing for Two: Pregnant Olympians Push the Boundaries of Possibility in Paris 

Paris 2024 Olympics - Archery - Women's Individual 1/32 Elimination Rnd - Invalides, Paris, France - July 30, 2024. Yaylagul Ramazanova of Azerbaijan in action. (Reuters)
Paris 2024 Olympics - Archery - Women's Individual 1/32 Elimination Rnd - Invalides, Paris, France - July 30, 2024. Yaylagul Ramazanova of Azerbaijan in action. (Reuters)

Many Olympic athletes take to Instagram to share news of their exploits, trials, victories and heartbreaks. After her fencing event ended last week, Egypt’s Nada Hafez shared a little bit more.

She’d been fencing for two, the athlete revealed — and in fact had been pregnant for seven months.

“What appears to you as two players on the podium, they were actually three!” Hafez wrote, under an emotional picture of her during the match. “It was me, my competitor, & my yet-to-come to our world, little baby!” Mom (and baby) finished the competition ranked 16th, Hafez's best result in three Olympics.

A day later, an Azerbaijani archer was also revealed on Instagram to have competed while six-and-a-half months pregnant. Yaylagul Ramazanova told Xinhua News she'd felt her baby kick before she took a shot — and then shot a 10, the maximum number of points.

There have been pregnant Olympians and Paralympians before, though the phenomenon is rare for obvious reasons. Still, most stories have been of athletes competing when they’re far earlier in their pregnancies — or not even far enough along to know they were expecting.

Like US beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh Jennings, who won her third gold medal while, unknowingly, five weeks pregnant with her third child.

“When I was throwing my body around fearlessly, and going for gold for our country, I was pregnant,” she said on “Today” after the London Games in 2012. She and husband Casey (also a beach volleyball player) had only started trying to conceive right before the Olympics, she said, figuring it would take time. But she felt different, and volleyball partner Misty May-Treanor said to her — presciently, it turned out — “You're probably pregnant.”

It makes sense that pregnant athletes are pushing boundaries now, one expert says, as both attitudes and knowledge develop about what women can do deep into pregnancy.

“This is something we’re seeing more and more of,” says Dr. Kathryn Ackerman, a sports medicine physician and co-chair of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee's women’s health task force, “as women are dispelling the myth that you can’t exercise at a high level when you’re pregnant.”

Ackerman notes there's been little data, and so past decisions on the matter have often been arbitrary. But, she says, “doctors now recommend that if an athlete is in good condition going into pregnancy, and there are no complications, then it's safe to work out, train, and compete at a very high level.” An exception, she says, might be something like ski racing, where the risk of a bad fall is great.

But in fencing, says the Boston-based Ackerman, there is clearly protective padding for athletes, and in less physically strenuous sports like archery or shooting, there's absolutely no reason a woman can't compete.

It’s not just an issue of physical fitness, of course. It is deeply emotional. Deciding whether and how to compete while trying to also grow a family is a thorny calculus that male athletes simply don’t have to consider — at least in anywhere near the same way.

Just ask Serena Williams, who famously won the Australian Open in 2017 while pregnant with her first child. When, some five years later, she wanted to try for a second, she stepped back from tennis — an excruciating decision.

“Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family,” Williams — who won four Olympic golds — wrote in a Vogue essay. “I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family. Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity.”

Williams welcomed Adira River Ohanian in 2023, joining older sister Olympia. And Olympia was the name that US softball player Michele Granger's mother reportedly suggested for the baby Granger was carrying when she pitched the gold-medal winning game in Atlanta in 1996. Her husband suggested the name Athena. Granger preferred neither.

“I didn't want to make that connection with her name,” said Granger to Gold Country Media in 2011. The baby was named Kady.

At the Paris fencing venue over the weekend, fans were mixed between admiration for the bravery and determination of Hafez, a 26-year-old former gymnast with a degree in medicine, and speculation about whether it was risky.

“There are certainly sports that are less violent,” said Pauline Dutertre, 29, sitting outside the elegant Grand Palais during a break in action alongside her father, Christian. Dutertre had competed herself on the international circuit in saber until 2013. “It is, after all, a combat sport.”

“In any case,” she noted, “it is courageous. Even without making it to the podium, what she did was brave.”

Marilyne Barbey, attending the fencing from Annecy in southeastern France with her family, wondered about safety too, but added: “You can fall anywhere, at any time. And, in the end, it is her choice.”

Ramazanova, who was visibly pregnant when competing, also earned admiration, including from her peers. She reached the final 32 in her event.

Casey Kaufhold, an American who earned bronze in the mixed team category, said it was “really cool” to see her Azerbaijani colleague achieving what she did.

“I think it’s awesome that we see more expecting mothers shooting in the Olympic Games and it’s great to have one in the sport of archery,” she said in comments to The Associated Press. “She shot really well, and I think it’s really cool because my coach is also a mother and she’s been doing so much to support her kids even while she’s away."

Kaufhold said she hoped Ramazanova's run would inspire more mothers and expectant mothers to compete. And she had a more personal thought for the mom-to-be:

“I think it’s awesome for this archer that one day, she can tell her kid, ‘Hey, I went to the Olympic Games and you were there, too.’”