Lionel Messi’s final match for Argentina was staged in front of a capacity crowd in Buenos Aires, where a friendly against Benin served as the curtain call for his international career. The evening opened with pre-match pyrotechnics and presentations, and an evocative “Gracias No 10” banner was unfurled across the pitch.
Argentina ran out comfortable winners, but the comfort did not extend to Messi’s own send-off. Benin’s goalkeeper, Marcel Dandjinou, repeatedly denied him a valedictory goal before Messi finally converted from the penalty spot, a moment greeted by an explosion of emotion, noise and tears around the stadium. An otherwise touching occasion was only slightly undercut by a drone display over the city that lit up the night sky with an advert for an insurance company.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s own international endgame has followed a very different script. The 41-year-old had already left the Portugal camp after promising to tell his people “the truth”, and he followed through with a 1,740-word statement published on social media. In it he detailed what he described as the breach of a “30-minute minute-management strategy” with Portugal head coach Jorge Jesus, and set out an eight-point list that Jesus had apparently agreed to deliver on the player’s behalf.
Jesus did not deliver it. “I read his statement,” the 72-year-old told reporters waiting outside his house. “Now, like I do every single day, I will go to the Portuguese federation and work, think about the team and the national squad. I have nothing more to say. Thank you.”
The two exits could hardly have been handled more differently. Messi’s farewell was an emotional, meticulously planned occasion, spoiled only slightly by the obligatory corporate intrusion. Ronaldo’s departure has instead been conducted through written statements and pointed refusals, with his head coach declining to play the role scripted for him. For more than two decades the argument over which of the two was the greater player has run on; the manner of their final international chapters has done little to settle it, but it has sharpened the contrast between them.