Argentines hoped Messi would stay forever
Argentine football captain Messi unified the country in a way few could
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THEY had hoped he would stay forever. When Lionel Messi announced on Monday (Aug 31) that he was retiring from the national team it unleashed a depth of grief and disbelief in Argentina rarely seen for an event everyone knew was coming.
“It hurts me so much,” said Damian Tiralongo, 47, owner of a football jersey store in Buenos Aires. “It’s the end of an era.”
The retirement of Messi, the soccer star who restored Argentina to global glory by leading the team to the 2022 World Cup and to the final this year, sparked not only fears of a diminished team, but heartbreak over the departure of an icon who had carried the hopes, pride and much of the identity of an entire country for two decades.
“Messi allows Argentines to exist in the world — like the Pope, like Maradona,” said Pedro Saborido, an Argentine screenwriter, referring to Pope Francis, another Argentine, and the other national soccer demigod, Diego Armando Maradona. “Now there is going to be a void.”
It is difficult to find an Argentine who does not own a Messi jersey. Some have his number tattooed on their biceps, and his face has been printed on candles, lollipops and devotional cards.
On Monday, Argentine sports presenters fought back tears while discussing Messi’s departure.
In a country famously divided by “la grieta,” or a deep political rift, Messi — with his quiet refusal to take part in ideological debates — is a unifying religion.
“He united Argentines a lot,” said Cynthia Alexandra Lozano, 38, a college professor sitting in a Buenos Aires square on Monday. “This creates a before-and-after in our football culture.”
Messi, captain of the national team, is, at 39, youngish in the world beyond soccer but elderly for a world-class player. His departure had been long anticipated but never officially confirmed.
His announcement on Monday — a handwritten letter published on Instagram — felt to many like a tender farewell from a star long admired as much for his humility as his football genius.
“I gave every last drop of myself; I have nothing left to give,” he wrote. “Now I will be just another one of you, always supporting and standing by the team from the outside (in the good times, and even more so in the bad).”
Messi wrote that he had prepared those words after his last World Cup appearance, when Argentina was defeated by Spain in the final in July, but that he is even more convinced of them now, after his father died this month.
Many Argentines had watched the final knowing that it was likely his last match with the national team, but the announcement was still a blow.
“I am kind of shocked,” said Alejandro Wall, an Argentine sports reporter. Messi, he said, was “someone who felt like he would last forever.”
That was especially true for Argentina’s youth, who only ever knew the country’s national team during an era when Messi made it seem nearly invincible, leading it to back-to-back Copa América titles and World Cup glory four years ago in Qatar.
“It’s not nice to see Argentina without Messi,” said Ignacio Gimenez, 14, a high school student who was getting ready to play football with his friends in Buenos Aires on Monday, wearing a Messi jersey. “It’s just not what I’m used to.”
The relationship between Messi and Argentines had not always been easy. Messi was born in Argentina but became a football star in Barcelona and struggled for years to win with his own national team. He faced constant comparisons to Maradona.
That tension began to dissolve in 2021, when Messi led Argentina to win the Copa America, and was put to rest the following year with the World Cup victory — turning him into perhaps the most undisputed national hero.
That continued during this year’s World Cup, when Messi said the victories “help us forget everything difficult we are going through,” adding a reference to the financial hardships many Argentines face.
“There are people without jobs, people who can’t make ends meet and people who are struggling every day,” he said. That meant a lot to many Argentines.
“I don’t know if there has ever been a love story between a player and a country as great as the one you built,” Rodrigo De Paul, an Argentine midfielder, wrote on Instagram.
Saborido, the screenwriter, who wrote extensively about football, said that Messi’s departure was a hit to the national psyche.
With Messi, he said, “We feel like we give something to the world — that we are good at something, that there is someone Julia Roberts wants to take a picture with, someone who breaks records, surprises people, and transcends boundaries,” he said. “Now we have to prepare for the fact that maybe, the next Messi will not be Argentine.”
Many Argentines hoped the country could still produce the next global football star.
“After Maradona, there was nobody — then came Messi,” said Carlos Gonzalez, 60, as he waited for a bus on Monday in Buenos Aires. “I’m sure someone will appear.”
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