Fittingly, Lionel Messi’s final appearance for Argentina was marked by a goal. At the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires, before more than 85,000 people, he did what he had done early and often over the past 21 years: He took responsibility for the occasion. He assisted Nicolás Otamendi for the opening goal, set up Nico Paz for the second, then scored the third from the penalty spot in a 3-0 victory over Benin. It was a tidy conclusion to an international career that was anything but. He leaves with 208 appearances and 126 goals for flag and country, both records, but the numbers tell only part of the story. The more significant statistic may well be the number of times he kept coming back.
For much of Messi’s career with Argentina, the figures were never quite enough. He could win virtually everything with Barcelona, collect individual awards, and establish himself as one of the defining players of his generation, but an overriding question followed him: What would he win for the blue and white? Consecutive major defeats at the 2014 World Cup and the 2015 and 2016 Copa America served only to sharpen the criticism. In 2016, after another Copa America final defeat, he retired from international football. It was a remarkable moment because the player who seemed almost incapable of failing at club level had become the symbol of disappointment for his national team. And then he returned, giving himself another opportunity to change a story that seemed destined to follow him.
The story changed thereafter. The Copa America triumph in 2021 ended Argentina’s long wait for a senior international trophy. A year later came Qatar, where Messi finally won the World Cup that had been used for so long as the missing piece in the argument over his place in football history. To be sure, the triumph did not make him a great player; nothing could have added much to what he had already accomplished. What it did was remove one of the last qualifications, however silly, attached to his greatness. Once criticized for not delivering for Argentina, he had become the captain who led his country to its most important triumph in decades. Another Copa America followed, and suddenly the international career that had hitherto seemed incomplete looked remarkably whole.
That is why the outpouring of emotion surrounding Messi’s farewell felt different from the usual sporting goodbye. There was no unfinished business left. He had already played his final World Cup, and Argentina had already won the trophy everyone said he needed. And so the night at the Monumental was as much a celebration of another achievement as an acknowledgment of everything that had come before it. The tears, the ovation for No. 10, the tributes, and the final goal were not simply for the player he remains, but for the years of expectation he carried. A country that appeared to continually demanded more from him was finally sending him away with gratitude.
If nothing else, Messi’s international career reminds all and sundry that sporting legacies are rarely written in straight lines. There were defeats, criticism, disappointment, and even a brief retirement, followed by the decision to return and try again. He could easily have allowed the failures to become the defining part of his Argentina story. Instead, he stayed long enough to change it. That may be the most lasting significance of his farewell. The trophies will remain, as will the records and the goals, but so will the years when none of those things seemed sufficient. He did not simply finish his Argentina career as a champion. He finished it having changed the meaning of persistence in a sport that is usually obsessed with results. In any case, when the final whistle came, there was nothing left for him to prove.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.