Having been all but promised their first square meal since the last corporate marketing ploy to come their way, thousands of children were left with rumbling stomachs after Lionel Messi did everything he could to avoid scoring a goal during Argentina’s opening World Cup game against Iceland on Saturday.
Mastercard, who have vowed to donate 10,000 meals to starving children across Latin America and the Caribbean on the strict condition that either Messi or Brazil’s Neymar score during the tournament have insisted their hands are well and truly tied. The financial conglomerate argued there is nothing they can do if Messi refuses to score and that they couldn’t possibly just give the meals away despite having the financial means to do so as it wouldn’t provide the brand reach executives demand.
“We really want to feed the children but there is nothing, I repeat nothing we can do if Messi goes out of his way to not score a goal. Did you see his penalty? A malnourished child could have saved that. Our only hope now is that Neymar doesn’t follow Messi’s dreadful example. If that happens then all these hot meals we’ve prepared will have gone to waste and we’ll be left with no choice but to let them rot. And who’s going to tell that to the starving children? Not me,” said a Mastercard spokesperson as he wolfed down a 12inch sub. “The children, and more importantly our branding team, will just have to make do with seeing our corporate tag line ‘priceless’ being positioned on advertising hoardings behind Messi throughout the rest of the World Cup.”
Messi who at the time of publishing has declined to comment on the story despite Eat My Goal reaching out to him on several occasions, was last seen during a solo training session which involved him purposefully drilling free kicks into a four man wall and skying penalties clean over the crossbar.
