Messi gets rockstar welcome in China ahead of Australia friendly

Football superstar Lionel Messi arrived in Beijing by private jet on Saturday and was greeted by hundreds of jubilant fans, with his World-Cup-winning Argentina set to face Australia in a friendly match next week.

This is Messi's seventh trip to China, the last being in 2017. World champions Argentina will play a friendly against Australia on June 15 at Beijing's newly-renovated 68,000-capacity Workers' Stadium.

The friendly will mark the return of international football to China, after three years of strict Covid-19 restrictions that emptied stadiums and led to a cascade of cancellations of sporting competitions.