Argentine football player Angel Di Maria said on Tuesday that safety concerns mean he will not finish his career in his native Rosario after a bullet-pierced pig's head was thrown at a family business. 

The 36-year-old, who won the World Cup with Argentina in 2022, had said he wanted to return to his boyhood club in the nation’s third-largest city, which has recently seen an explosion in gang-related crime.

"There was a threat at my sister's business: it was a box with a pig head and a bullet in the forehead and a note that said that if I returned to [Rosario] Central, the next head was that of my daughter Pia," Di Maria told TV station Rosario3. 

“I am not going to return to Rosario in this way. They touched my family and I am not going to allow that. Not at any price,” he said.