{"id":873153,"date":"2026-10-06T20:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T20:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/873153\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T20:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T20:22:09","slug":"argentina-bids-messi-farewell-in-final-national-team-match-ending-an-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/873153\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentina bids Messi farewell in final national team match, ending an era"},"content":{"rendered":"

BUENOS AIRES \u2013 Argentina is girding itself for the once-unimaginable prospect of a national team without soccer great Lionel Messi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the 39-year-old Messi is set to bid farewell to international soccer after 21 years, 125 goals, two Copa Am\u00e9rica titles<\/a> and a World Cup championship<\/a>. What would otherwise be an unremarkable friendly match against the West African nation of Benin has become the moment that this soccer-crazed country<\/a> has long dreaded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like an era is ending, knowing he won\u2019t play for the national team anymore,\u201d said Valentino Ruso, 17, who was hanging out with friends in a Buenos Aires park on Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m sad. I think everyone is upset today. He will be missed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Argentines have had an intense, often unforgiving relationship with the shy boy who left his hometown of Rosario<\/a> at 13 for the youth academy of Spanish club Barcelona. As he grew into a global icon of near-mythical stature<\/a>, his compatriots adored and abused him, doubted his commitment and accused him of indifference to his own country.<\/p>\n

But as he prepares to say goodbye<\/a> to the national team, his devotion to Argentina is no longer in question. Nor is Argentina\u2019s devotion<\/a> to its most famous export whose triumphs have served as reminders of national greatness through years of political and economic instability<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cArgentines often say, \u2018Thank God I was born at a time when I could experience the miracle of watching Messi play,\u2019\u201d said Andr\u00e9s Rabinovich, a University of Chicago scholar who has researched soccer\u2019s role in Argentine culture. \u201cIt\u2019s hard living in Argentina. Soccer is often one of the few things that offer you some respite, some joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years, Argentines had debated when and how Messi should leave the international stage \u2014 though he’ll continue to play for MLS team Inter Miami. His Aug. 31 announcement that he’d be retiring<\/a> from the national team, weeks after Argentina\u2019s loss to Spain in the World Cup final, prompted an outpouring of gratitude and grief.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if there has ever been a love story between a player and a country as great as the one you built,\u201d his teammate Rodrigo De Paul wrote on Instagram.<\/p>\n

The Argentine soccer federation has turned Tuesday\u2019s game \u2014 Messi\u2019s 208th \u2014 into a national homage dubbed \u201cthe last tango.\u201d Some 85,000 tickets to Buenos Aires\u2019 largest stadium sold out in 90 minutes, and members of Argentina\u2019s 2022 World Cup-winning squad and their families were invited back to join the tribute.<\/p>\n

Winning over his own<\/p>\n

During the 2000s and 2010s, Messi amassed trophies with his club<\/a> and won diehard fans from Barcelona<\/a> to Bangladesh<\/a>. Yet a major championship for his own country eluded him.<\/p>\n

Where the world saw a supernatural talent, some at home saw an outsider who had never played professionally in Argentina and could not deliver when it mattered most to the nation. Argentine crowds chanted \u201cDiego, Diego,\u201d invoking Diego Maradona<\/a>, the larger-than-life hero of Argentina\u2019s 1986 World Cup victory<\/a> \u2014 and reminding Messi of the standard<\/a> he had yet to meet. Messi\u2019s quiet reserve, so at odds with Maradona\u2019s defiant swagger<\/a>, fueled doubts about his patriotism.<\/p>\n

After Argentina lost a third consecutive final in 2016, Messi briefly quit<\/a> the national team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some resentment by the people that stay in Argentina for those who leave, this sense of, \u2018They think they\u2019re better than us,\u2019\u201d said Rabinovich, adding that he identifies with Messi as a fellow teenage migrant, having moved to Canada during Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis<\/a>, around the time Messi left for Europe. \u201cThe old-school Argentines would say, \u2018Diego is the Argentine. Messi is soft, a little Spanish boy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The turning point<\/a> came in 2021, when Argentina beat Brazil to win the Copa Am\u00e9rica<\/a>, South America\u2019s championship, for the first time in 28 years. Messi collapsed to the turf as his teammates, delirious, ran to hug him. The player long accused of feeling too little could not stop sobbing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWinning clearly disarmed his critics. That\u2019s how soccer works in Argentina,\u201d said Diego Murzi, a sports sociologist at Conicet, Argentina\u2019s national scientific research council. \u201cCriticism of things off the field goes hand in hand with defeats on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The World Cup victory<\/a> the following year in Qatar<\/a> sealed his place as a national hero. Messi had delivered the one prize<\/a> that had eluded him, and millions of Argentines poured into the streets<\/a> in collective ecstasy, his name in their chants and his No. 10 on their backs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll never forget it. I\u2019d never experienced anything like that, being out there with everyone, celebrating together,\u201d said Antonia Correa, 70, a kiosk owner recalling that day as she waited for a bus in Buenos Aires on Tuesday. \u201cWe saw that he wasn\u2019t just an extraordinary player, but an excellent human being.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, newspapers have hummed with nostalgic tributes and murals<\/a> celebrating Messi have sprung up across the country. La Naci\u00f3n, a leading Argentine daily newspaper, released \u201cImmortal,\u201d a documentary chronicling his final World Cup run, and published a 196-page special edition devoted to his career. A giant replica of his No. 10 Argentina jersey, emblazoned with the word \u201cGracias,\u201d was unfurled Monday across a main plaza in his home city of Rosario. And in Patagonia, a 26-meter (85-foot), 70-ton statue of Messi kneeling with the World Cup trophy has towered over passing motorists since June.<\/p>\n

A jersey without an heir<\/p>\n

Across Argentina, fans who grew up watching Messi as their parents watched Maradona now carry him on their skin, in tattoos<\/a> of him kissing the World Cup trophy. It was easy to believe the world\u2019s greatest player would always be one of their own. Now even Messi\u2019s No. 10 shirt<\/a> has no designated heir, with coach Lionel Scaloni<\/a> saying the decision would wait until after his final match.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ll have somebody like him again, somebody with that sort of enduring power,\u201d said Pablo Brescia, a University of South Florida professor who writes about Argentine culture and soccer. \u201cLike Maradona, he\u2019ll be unique \u2014 a figure that can\u2019t be repeated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messi will continue playing for Inter Miami<\/a>, where his contract runs through the 2028 season. But the charged ritual of watching him carry Argentina\u2019s hopes and anxieties into every match is ending.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatching Messi play, you felt anything could happen,\u201d Murzi said. “I\u2019ve seen him do things that I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever see another player do.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

\nSee AP\u2019s full soccer coverage here<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUENOS AIRES \u2013 Argentina is girding itself for the once-unimaginable prospect of a national team without soccer great…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[367854,4,450,325417,367853,451,6865,305860,3,173095,99,452,453,965],"class_list":["post-873153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-antonia-correa","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-diego-maradona","tag-diego-murzi","tag-headlines","tag-lionel-messi","tag-lionel-scaloni","tag-news","tag-rodrigo-de-paul","tag-sports","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}