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31 minutes late, but we are underway at the Estadio Monumental!
Another reader email, this one from Dion in Australia, who legitimately invited me to his wedding (thanks so much, but I don’t have that budgeted) and then offered his thoughts – it’s been incredible, honestly, to watch the compare/contrast between Messi and Ronaldo’s experiences this window:
Devastating to see Messi go. Although I once saw them as equals, Ronaldo has disgraced himself this month with his Keane-’esque’ blow up at the nations league. To be a champion you must age gracefully, which Messi has done. To have such a great career in this era is an even greater achievement than in the past. The standard of defending faced by Maradona or Pele was hopeless by comparison.
Messi is not the only one crying now, as Argentina Boss Lionel Scaloni tears up during the Argentine anthem. Guardian reader Julia is also feeling it – she reaches out with this tribute:
I’m 29 years old and have watched the World Cup as long as I can remember, but 2006 is the first one that’s really clear for me. My family are Argentina fans (to put it mildly), and my dad was a Messi believer from the beginning. I hate to be that person, but I’ve literally been a Leo fan for more than two-thirds of my life, and he’s seen me through growing up, losing a parent, graduating law school, and everything else. Today feels monumental, and I’m both pretty devastated and parasocially thrilled that he’s getting all the love he deserves.
Kickoff was delayed from 7 to 7:!5 and we still don’t have teams on the pitch. We’ll see how long this drags out – the pitch, as of now, is covered by a massive Messi jersey, and the stadium is in full voice singing “Muchachos,” Argentina’s iconic battle call as of late.
By the way, if any of you have comments, questions, compliments, criticisms, or memories of Messi in an Argentina shirt, feel free to use the link at the head of this page to email me and we’ll navigate them together. It’s lonely here in the basement.
A lot of chatter on the Vix broadcast about ticket prices, which has been a central point of discussion in Argentina ahead of this match, with some accusing the Argentine Football Association of price gauging. “Sorry to those of you who couldn’t be here,” says the pitchside commentator, in Spanish, “maybe because of decisions made by people far away from the pitch. The prices for this match certainly were not for ‘the people.’”
Reminds me a bit of the World Cup, obviously, and just like those matches, this one is fully sold out.
Guardian reader Paul reached out via email and is apparently deep in the comments section of a 20-year-old Messi article we published here at the Guardian. I can only hope Guardian reader “snafuclarke” has fully recovered from such a scorchingly terrible take:
don’t kid yourselves. messi is currently hugely overrated. the amount of hype this lad gets has never matched his performances on the pitch the last game aside.
the fact is that all too often he’s peripheral to the game and rarely has any effect on the result. one game where he bags a hat trick does not make him the superstar some are desperate to acclaim him.
if he continues to put in that sort of performance over the course of a few years, fine he’ll be up there, but anyone saying, “oh he’s great player, even now” is either devoid of anything to compare him against or just not very clued up about football. potential is one thing, performance is what counts and this far one game in what 40 odd first team games perhaps, is not a very good record.
Updated at 19.00 EDT
We’ve seen a lot of tears out of Messi over the years – tears when he briefly retired from the national team in 2016, tears when he won in 2022, tears of joy and sadness alike at the 2026 World Cup. Today we add “tears on the bus ride to the stadium” and “tears during warmups” to the archives.
A moment of appreciation, please, for athletes who emote so openly. It’s lovely to see.
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Updated at 18.54 EDT
Absolutely electric atmosphere at the Estadio Monumental, the home ground of Argentine side River Plate and the largest stadium in the country – it is filled to capacity well ahead of the opening kick.
Argentina are near-unbeatable at the venue and Messi himself has never lost a match at the stadium, having won 22 of the 28 matches he’s played there with Argentina and drawn the other six, scoring 19 goals along the way.
Something tells Benin will not be breaking that streak tonight.
Argentina’s starting XI is out and Messi, unsurprisingly, is in it, as are many of the players who helped guide Argentina to the 2026 World Cup final.
Goalkeeper: Emiliano Martínez
Defenders: Agustín Giay, Cristian Romero, Nicolás Otamendi, Nicolás Tagliafico
Midfielders: Enzo Fernández, Alexis Mac Allister, Rodrigo De Paul
Forwards: Julián Álvarez, Lautaro Martínez, Lionel Mess
Messi, like any other megastar, has his haters and believers. I can’t say I fall into either side, but I find myself a bit sad watching the early scenes at Estadio Monumental.
I’ve covered him in person dozens of times at this point, both with Argentina at this summer’s World Cup and over the entirety of his club career at Inter Miami. I can’t say it ever gets old – his magic is so predictable at times but never ceases to amaze. As I told a friend the other day – watching Messi is like watching a comedian tell the same joke over and over again, and you still laugh every time. Let’s see what he has in store for us tonight.
I could populate the entirety of this pre-match coverage with milestones and statistics from Messi’s illustrious career – his international career alone is a statistician’s dream, especially in the past two World Cup cycles, which saw him solidify his status as an immortal.
Our own Ryan Benson unpacks the statistical absurdity of it all, arguing that Messi has at this point “completed football.” It’s hard to disagree:
For now, though, it’s time for Argentina to celebrate what they have achieved with Messi because there is no guarantee it will ever be as good as this again. Argentina had already won the lottery once before with Maradona; it’ll surely be a while before they strike gold a third time. Luckily, Messi provided them with memories to last a lifetime.
More at the link below.
If you’re watching tonight’s game in the United States you’re likely tuned into Vix, a Miami-based streaming service that operates in the US, South America and Spain. It’s probably unfair to call it an odd fit – the service regularly broadcasts matches from a host of competitions across North and South America but still – you’d think the final international appearance of the world’s best-ever footballer would find a wider audience elsewhere.
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Pablo Iglesias Maurer
Hi folks, Pablo Iglesias Maurer here, settled in and ready for Lionel Messi’s swan song as Argentina welcome 93rd-ranked Benin to El Monumental for an international friendly.
First things first – if you’re wondering why Argentina is playing a team like Benin, you likely haven’t been paying much attention to the types of friendlies the Albiceleste typically schedule. It’s far from their first encounter with a bottom-rung opponent; the average FIFA global ranking of their friendly opponents over the past several years is 85, at the moment, having faced other minnows like Burkina Faso and Mauritania.
This dynamic offers little in the way of competition but offers the Argentine Football Association a huge amount of control in terms of logistics and financial terms. Tonight, it may lead to all of us seeing Messi score a dozen goals or more. Who knows.
Messi’s international career falls into two distinct halves. There was the first decade when there was a sense that he didn’t quite fit, was somehow insufficiently Argentinian, didn’t care for his country. That was always absurd and can be recognised now as a manifestation of the Argentinian public’s frustration at their trophy drought despite the presence in their forward line of one of the best three to play the game.
Then Messi retired, distraught after a missing a penalty in the shootout against Chile in the Copa América final in 2016. Suddenly, Argentina, rather than just lashing out at their biggest star, was forced to confront what it would mean to live without him. The prospect was so appalling it provoked a mass campaign to encourage Messi to reverse his decision.
Since then he has been loved and, despite a shambolic World Cup in 2018, has delivered with two Copas América, a World Cup and another World Cup final. His career was dogged by the accusation that he never matched Diego Maradona’s achievements in a national shirt; he ended up having won more.
Read more from Jonathan Wilson:
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Hello and welcome to our liveblog of a sure-to-be emotional occasion in Buenos Aires. Pablo will be along shortly.