Fox Sports tweets death of Lionel Messi

Lionel Messi is alive and well, despite reports to the contrary on Twitter.

Fox Sports Latin America got itself into a social media mess late Saturday night after reporting the death of the Barcelona star on its official North Cone (Mexico, Central America, Venezuela) Twitter feed.

"We must report the sad news that Leonel [sic] Messi died of cardiac arrest during training #RipMessi," said the tweet that was sent to 250,000-plus followers.

The message was deleted seconds later, but not quickly enough to prevent a screen shot (pictured) from being taken and circulated throughout the Internet, Sport of Spain reported.

Fox Sports then went into damage control mode, while also blaming hackers for the incident.

"We regret the earlier tweet and offer our apologies to those that were offended. Clearly we were hacked."

Messi is currently in his native Argentina training with the national team ahead of Saturday's World Cup qualifier against Ecuador.