Benin are used to being overshadowed. The small West African nation sits next to Nigeria, a footballing powerhouse of the continent, and its team, the Cheetahs, rarely command attention beyond their own region. On Tuesday (Wednesday 00:00 BST) that changes: Benin face Argentina in Buenos Aires in what will be Lionel Messi’s final international match.
The occasion has been marked with a specially designed Argentina kit, and the shirt Messi wears could go on to become one of the most expensive ever. The gulf between the two sides is considerable. Benin’s players are drawn from leagues in Finland, Switzerland’s second tier and the South African Premiership, and the fixture comes after Argentina warmed up by beating fellow West African side Burkina Faso 7-0.
Benin’s captain Steve Mounie is their best-known player. The forward plays for Bundesliga side FC Augsburg and is familiar to English audiences from his time at Huddersfield Town between 2017 and 2020. A regular with the national team for more than a decade, he had never played a game for Benin outside Africa before this trip.
Mounie described how news of the fixture landed with the squad. “When the coach called me and told me about this game, we didn’t know it was going to be the last game of Leo Messi,” he said. “It was like the cherry on top of the cake. It adds some more values to this big event for Benin, and it’s going to be a big event for the world of football.”
An injury means Mounie will play no part in the match, but he refused to stay at home to recover. He paid for his own plane ticket to travel to Argentina, saying: “I cannot play. I just came to join the team, to support the team. And, I need to be honest with this because football is my passion. I came for myself. I would prefer to be on the bench, but if they tell me that I need to be in the stand, I will be in the stand. There is no problem, but I want to see the game from a pitch view.”
With the result of the friendly largely inconsequential in his view, Mounie believes those who are selected have a chance to enhance their own reputations and that of Beninese football. He described a disciplined side with plenty of young, technically gifted players who are willing to go forward and press, but who stick together and fight when they cannot. “We are a team like a family,” he said. “And I think we can relate to this Argentina team because they feel like they are like a family too, which Messi is a father to.”
Argentina went into the fixture having beaten Burkina Faso 7-0, and many will predict a similar scoreline against Benin. Messi is unlikely to play the full 90 minutes. The more likely scenario is that, with Argentina a few goals to the good, he is substituted in the second half, allowing the sold-out crowd at Estadio Monumental to say farewell to the country’s greatest sports star.
Once the final whistle goes, a rush towards the World Cup-winning captain is to be expected. “To get hold of a Messi match-worn shirt is incredibly tough because everybody knows how valuable they are,” said Doug Bierton, founder of Classic Football Shirts. “So every player on the pitch is looking to swap with him. It’s the first time a legend has bowed out with a special edition shirt.”
Bierton, whose private collection of iconic football shirts runs into the thousands, ranks the last match-worn Messi shirt as a collector’s dream, in the same category as Diego Maradona’s shirt from his ‘Hand of God’ goal against England at the 1986 World Cup, which sold for £7.1m at auction in May 2022, and Zinedine Zidane’s shirt from his final France appearance, the 2006 World Cup final in which he was sent off for headbutting Italy’s Marco Materazzi. The fact that Messi’s shirt is being worn in a friendly and is still held in such regard is a measure of the belief that he is the greatest footballer ever.
Bierton expects interest from beyond Benin. “I’m sure some of his team-mates will be too, he’s good friends with [Rodrigo] De Paul,” he said. “He’ll probably be after it as well. Does he get a gift, a retirement present? The kit man will be after it. Who knows? I’m literally going to watch the match just to see who he swaps shirts with.”