The day after Lionel Messi announced plans to leave the Argentina national team, Argentine great Diego Maradona said the Barcelona No. 10 must continue to represent his country.

After losing to Chile on penalty kicks for a second consecutive tournament, Messi told reporters that he believes his time with the national team has come to an end. Messi expressed his frustration after losing four finals, Sunday's Copa America Centenario decider, the 2007 and 2015 Copa America finals and the final of the 2014 World Cup. But earlier in the tournament, the 28-year-old publicly voiced his anger with the Argentine Football Association.

Maradona also has butted heads with AFA officials and said Messi's departure is covering up deficiencies in the setup.

"Messi has to continue with the national team. He has to continue!" Maradona told La Nacion. "He has to continue because he has more in him, because he's going to arrive in Russia in form to be champion of the world. He has to rely more on the guys who can help him to take the team forward and less on those who say he has to go. Put aside those who won't even let him cry! They don't play and they don't let him mourn. Because those who say that he has to go do it so we might not see the disaster that is Argentine football."

The support for Messi is something of a change of heart for Maradona, who won the 1986 World Cup with Argentina and was part of the runner-up squad in 1990. Prior to the final, Maradona told an Argentine television outlet, "If we don’t win, they shouldn’t come back." Earlier in the tournament, Maradona said Messi "is a great person, but he has no personality. He doesn't have the personality to be a leader."

But the thought of Messi leaving the team because of pressure from AFA directors and other critics has Maradona hoping to support him in a fight to change Argentine soccer rather than seeing him depart the team.

"They left Messi alone, and I don't want to leave him alone," Maradona said of the AFA's leaders. "Because of that, I want to talk to him, to fight against everybody who left it to him, from the first to the last director, from (recently resigned AFA president Luis) Segura to (Estudiantes president Juan Sebastian) Veron, whoever it might be."

Maradona went on to suggest that Messi may have been encouraged to take some of the heat off the federation after two tight losses to Chile, an opponent Maradona sees as far from the 1974 Netherlands team that pasted Argentina 4-0 in a World Cup group match.

"For me, the only thing Leo's words were good for is to cover up all the disasters there are in Argentine soccer. They put the face of this guy out there to cover up all the disasters they've made in the AFA and today we're talking about him and not about them. And also to cover up that we lost two consecutive finals against Chile, who, with all the respect in the world, isn't Holland in '74. And we lost both of them.

"The truth is, at this level, I don't believe anybody. I have the feeling that they sent him out there, 'Walk out there and say something to save us.' We were a disaster and they left him alone."