Lionel Messi has played his last game for Argentina. His final appearance for the national team came against Benin on Tuesday, closing an international career that, for all its trophies, was shaped as much by loss as by glory. When he confirmed he would end his international career, a wave of grief and gratitude swept the nation.
The farewell followed a bruising 2026 World Cup. Argentina had been treated as darlings when they won the tournament in 2022; by the time the 2026 final ended in defeat to Spain, they had become villains. The final against Spain lacked sublime power and opened the floodgates of vitriol from all corners of the globe. Argentinian fans were offended, hurt and defensive — and aware they may have just seen Messi’s last appearance in an Argentina shirt.
At the height of the anti-Argentinian sentiment during this year’s tournament, the Brazilian writer Milly Lacombe posted: “What Argentina is doing in this World Cup is of a sacred order.” She was exploring a contradiction she felt around her own support of Messi — “a player who is a God and a man who shakes Trump’s hand” — and the importance of acknowledging the complexities around him and the team. How was it possible, she asked, that Messi was not speaking out against the racist incidents seen around the Argentina team? “That’s why it hurts so much to see someone with Messi’s power choosing to make himself small,” she wrote.
Much was made of Messi’s silence at the time, though much has always been made of his visible discomfort with words. The journalist John Carlin once said that, having interviewed Messi twice, he would decline a third opportunity, such was the challenge of getting him to say anything of consequence. In 2010, Juan Sebastián Verón said he had never seen Messi as nervous as when he had to address his teammates for the first time as Argentina captain. In terms of public speaking, perhaps his most famous outburst came at the 2022 World Cup, when he told a Dutch player to “go away”.
Yet Messi has always meant something, even when he does not speak. Speaking after Argentina’s semi-final victory over England this summer, Lacombe described the mystery she saw in him: “when Messi, in the middle of a game that was lost, looks at the sky, and then after that he turns the game around and smashed it, there is something very mysterious there. Right? That we can’t explain. That we just feel.” She added that she had started supporting England but ended the match weeping, “surrendered to the commitment, the passion, the love that I saw the Argentina team pour on to the pitch. It’s only in that moment of intense passion that we reach the sacred.”
Messi’s ties to Argentina were not always straightforward. He grew up in Barcelona’s youth system and was eligible to play for both Spain and Argentina. His debut for Argentina, in a youth match against Paraguay, set off a rush to ensure he pledged his allegiance to the country of his birth before Spain could tempt him. He was already one of Barcelona’s academy’s most promising stars but was little known in Argentina, and his father, Jorge, wanted nothing more than for his son to represent the national team, sending videos to then-manager Marcelo Bielsa hoping to expedite the process. For years Jorge endured an uphill struggle to consolidate the ties between Lionel and Argentina, and would ask his compatriots the same question: how can we get Argentina to love my son?
As his football obituary begins to be written, some of the most grievous incidents against him are resurfacing. A panel of pundits once stood in a minute’s silence in protest against his performances for his country. He was criticised for not singing the national anthem. It emerged that before Argentina matches he suffered bouts of vomiting and diarrhoea. Diego Maradona mocked him, saying he was no leader — although he would later make Messi Argentina’s captain. And when the campaign to win over the nation stepped up and he gave interviews, his discourse was shockingly basic and gave little away.
But Messi never gave up. He missed penalties, wept, and stood up to take them again. “What characterized Messi in the national team is that he lost. He lost a lot. He’s constituted in defeat,” the Argentinian journalist Alejandro Wall said. The vitriol, in any case, more often came from the press than the people: when Messi quit the national team in 2016, a spontaneous show of love and desire swept the nation and he reversed his decision. From then on, the Argentinian Football Association’s main priority mirrored Jorge Messi’s — finding a coach who could adapt the entire system to Lionel. It was not easy.
Perhaps it was only after Maradona’s death in 2020 that a new Messi began to emerge. He walked taller, more confident and comfortable in his role as leader. In 2021 Argentina won the Copa América, and snippets of Messi’s pep talks to his teammates filtered out — simple statements in his unmistakable Rosario accent, aspirating the ‘s’ and not pronouncing most final consonants. His and Argentina’s achievements since then speak for themselves.
Tuesday’s farewell at the Monumental Stadium had a rushed, improvised air, much like that first youth game against Paraguay. The Argentinian FA struggled to secure opponents, not wanting to share box office with another footballing power. Benin were mocked by some as unworthy, and even Lionel Scaloni made reference to a desire to face bigger opponents than Bolivia and Burkina Faso, the other teams Argentina played this window. Burkina Faso ended up sending an Under-23 side who arrived a few hours before the match, and the stadium was not filled to capacity; ticket prices were extortionate, and diehard fans refused to fall for what they called “a scam”.
But against Benin they turned up in numbers. Earlier, Messi had picked up an honorary doctorate from the University of Buenos Aires in a small and shabby ceremony in a back office of the Argentinian FA. Delicately produced homages to the No 10 were aired and social media filled with hyperbolic emotion. “Like Scheherazade, he mocked destiny match by match, to gift the Argentina people another day of his magic. The thousand and one nights of Lionel Messi with the light blue and white come to their end,” read one post. “Whoah, hold it! It’s 9am. I can’t start weeping yet,” came a swift reply.
The entertainment around the match was, to paraphrase Wayne Rooney, crap. There was a drawn-out homage by Soledad Pastorutti, who sang the same number she had once performed with Maradona. A veteran of the Falklands/Malvinas War sang the national anthem and then clad himself in the same flag that fell on the pitch in Atlanta. The terraces chanted against AFA president Chiqui Tapia in a chorus that went some way to atoning for the drone show at the end, with adverts for an insurance company glittering in the sky.
But football is about redemption, and the night was redeemed. Benin actually put up a fight, bookended by the team’s captain gifting Messi a statue of a Dahomey Agojie, the group of women who fought against French occupation. Messi set up three of his team’s three goals and took a penalty. He didn’t miss.
The cameras zoomed in on weeping faces, but the sounds from the concrete terraces were decisively celebratory, relentless and trembling. It was football through and through, and Messi loved it. He picked up the microphone and delivered a speech so articulate and confident that it merits a dissertation studying its every word. He addressed conspiracy theories surrounding the World Cup final: “Nothing odd happened. The match against England wore us out at an emotional level.” He warned of hard times to come but said team unity is the way through.
“We had the dream of fulfilling our dream,” he said, adding: “I don’t know, I’m talking more than ever. I don’t want to leave here. I love you.” And Argentina loves him back. As Lacombe put it, when Messi looks at the sky, then turns a situation around and smashes it, there is mystery. There is something sacred.