By Juan Pablo Spinetto | Updated on Oct 06, 2026 at 11:08 AM
Ten years ago, Lionel Messi was defeated, dejected, absolutely heartbroken.
“I did everything I could, and it didn’t work out for me,” the great man told reporters as he announced his retirement from Argentina’s national team after losing a fourth tournament final. “That’s it.”
Oh Leo, if you had known…
What came after is now history: Messi would reverse that hot-headed decision two months later and lead Argentina through its most glorious period. He won a World Cup in 2022 and reached another final this year, being the tournament’s best player at 39, an age when most of his colleagues are growing their bellies as TV commentators.
Full redemption, and more.
Tonight, when he walks onto a football pitch with Argentina for the final time, wearing a sky blue-and-white striped jersey specially designed for the occasion, it will be a night of emotion and remembrance.
For me, it will mean saying goodbye to my superhero, the guy who for the past two decades has given me hope that all my football dreams could become reality. The memories are endless : from walking out of Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã in tears after watching him lose the 2014 World Cup final, a game Argentina deserved to win, to marveling at his leadership as he carried an exhausted team through Miami’s extreme heat to beat Cabo Verde this past July. Not to mention his glories in Qatar and THAT England match .
I could bore you with crazy stats and achievements that prove his uniqueness. In my eyes, he’s not only the best football player in history but also the greatest athlete ever. I know that’s controversial, but the defining fact is this: Messi has dominated his field — the world’s most popular sport, remember — pretty much since his meteoric emergence in late 2004.
Back then, George W. Bush was struggling to contain the US debacle in Iraq, Facebook was an incipient idea confined to Harvard and Venezuelans still believed in Hugo Chávez. That’s how much the world has changed in 22 years, and yet we still have Lionel Messi doing unbelievable stuff on a football pitch, like that insane free-kick goal he scored for Inter Miami a few days ago. Neither Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Muhammad Ali, Michael Phelps nor Usain Bolt, the other all-time greats, could claim that. Sorry if you disagree.
And yet, for all his magic on the field, it’s his perseverance, passion and down-to-earth personality that strikes me the most. At a time when global stars have armies of advisers choreographing each of their moves, this guy seems simply motivated by kicking a ball and scoring more goals than the rival, football at its most essential form. He seems happier attending a fourth-division match in his hometown than enjoying the spotlight of big galas in Europe.
Messi was already Messi in 2016, when he made that imprudent retirement announcement. Having just turned 29, an age when players are starting to run out of options, he could have chosen the quiet life, enjoying his family instead of spending most summers training with the national team after a long club season. He nevertheless went back to business and endured new defeats for another five years before he could finally say he had won something with Argentina. That’s an example of determination, mental strength and loyalty for his colors worth admiring.
That’s why for Argentines, who did not always share my idyllic view of the Rosario-born star, Messi is now something akin to Churchill: the captain who, after so many years of economic decay and frustrations, gives the country an aura of invincibility, as if reviving past glories, even if we all know it’s ephemeral.
Such defining influence is even more remarkable considering the disastrous management of the Argentine football association off the pitch. Case in point: Argentina’s match tonight, Messi’s historic farewell, will be against 93rd-ranked Benin. His retirement, now for real even if I think he’s rushing it again, will expose the institutional shortcomings of the AFA, as the national association is known. It will also force a long and painful restructuring of the national team, knowing he won’t be around anymore to rub the lamp and pull us out of trouble when things go south.
Leo Messi is, above all, an anomaly : an alien who came to Earth to remind us that everything is truly possible, that you can always turn things around. While he still has a few battles to play with Inter Miami in MLS, it’s clear his future is increasingly linked to business and entrepreneurship rather than astounding us on a pitch. I will miss watching him, expecting the unexpected and yet nonetheless being stunned into asking, when the magic happens, “just how did he do that?”
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