Messi
MessiReuters

The Untold Story. A day before the well-publicized cancellation of the match between Israel's soccer team and the Argentinian national team, the Argentinians, relatively quietly, had already cancelled a visit to the Vatican, which was supposed to include a meeting with the Pope.

For the past week, the Argentinian team has been in a training camp in Barcelona, ​​and last month it planned a highly-publicized visit to the pope, who was born in Argentina.

However, before the visit, on Tuesday, the Argentinian football association announced that the team had decided not to go to Rome. No reason was given for the cancellation.

Argentinian officials told local media that the players seemed to have decided to cancel both the visit to the Pope and the game in Israel for personal reasons. "They simply do not want to leave the training camp in Barcelona for anywhere - and as far as they are concerned, they do not feel there are any implications for any cancellation," the sources said.

A diplomatic source told Arutz Sheva this morning, "The messages we received from the Argentinian diplomatic system made it clear that the reason is not connected to Jerusalem, but mainly to the players' internal decision, and this is evidenced by the amount of apologies from their football association, which understood the gravity of the problem."

The messages received in Jerusalem over the past 24 hours spoke of the fact that the players simply do not feel like leaving the comfortable training camp ahead of their arrival in Russia for the World Cup games.