Preston North End's Daniel Johnson reflects on his experience of playing against Lionel Messi and World Cup winners Argentina

Back in September, the midfielder started in Jamaica's 3-0 friendly defeat against the newly crowned World Cup winners.

Messi scored a brace in Sunday’s final, as Lionel Scaloni’s side beat France on penalties, with the game finishing 3-3 AET.

“It was really good playing against him in the summer,” Johnson said.

“It’s really hard to describe the atmosphere. You would’ve had to be there to know what I’m talking about.

“What a guy and he’s some player. I’ll only ever have positive things to say about him.

“The Argentina squad were really friendly.

“We spoke to a few of them after the game in the tunnel, but it was literally a ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ kind of thing, and ‘good luck for the rest of the season.”

Johnson started for Preston in their 1-0 defeat to QPR at Deepdale on Saturday afternoon, and says they must continue to take things game by game, with Ryan Lowe’s side currently sitting seventh in the Championship table.

“This league is all about consistency,” he added.

“It’s about picking up maximum points in the next 20 plus games to see where it takes us.

“Obviously we want to be where we are at the minute, so hopefully we will finish there and will achieve our goal.

“Each team I’ve been in have all been different in their own ways but at the minute we are relatively happy with where we are and we just want to keep plugging away, taking it game by game.

“All I can do is focus on me, myself, my teammates and the football club. I’m happy to be back in the team.

“I’m happy to always be out there to contribute to whatever happens out there on the pitch.

“We need to see how the next couple of weeks go. You don’t get too high or too low, you just try to stay in the middle ground.

“Home form is something we’ve looked at and is definitely something we want to improve.”