Buenos Aires: Argentina is confronting a once-unimaginable reality: a national team without soccer great Lionel Messi.
Tuesday, 39-year-old Messi bid farewell to international soccer after 21 years, 126 goals, two Copa America titles and a World Cup championship, scoring a penalty and setting up Argentina’s other two goals for a 3-0 victory over Benin.
What was otherwise an unremarkable friendly against the West African nation became a moment that this soccer-crazed country had long dreaded.
The Argentine soccer federation turned Tuesday’s game – Messi’s 208th – into a national farewell billed as “the last tango.”
More than 85,000 tickets to Buenos Aires’ largest stadium sold out in 90 minutes, seats that were originally priced around $60-$300 later fetching over $2,500 on resale sites.
Players from Argentina’s 1978, 1986 and 2022 World Cup-winning squads returned to see him off.
After the final whistle, Messi’s eyes glistened as his teammates gathered around him, applauding.
A rumbling chorus of “Ole, ole, ole, ole, Messi, Messi” rose from the stands as tens of thousands of fans jumped, sang and bowed toward him as if in worship.
A banner at midfield proclaimed him the “Eternal Captain.”
“The truth is, I’m talking more than I ever have. I don’t want to leave here, I don’t want to leave this fi eld,” Messi told the crowd, which roared as if he had scored.
“I just want to tell you that I love you, I’m going to miss you, and I’m grateful to God to be Argentine.” Argentines had an intense, often unforgiving relationship with the shy boy who left his hometown of Rosario at 13 for the youth academy of Spanish club Barcelona.
As he grew into a global icon of near-mythical stature, his compatriots adored and abused him, sometimes questioning his commitment to his home country and accusing him of indifference to it.
But by the time he ended his dazzling international career, his devotion to Argentina was no longer in question.
Nor was Argentina’s devotion to its most famous export, whose triumphs reminded the country of its capacity for greatness through years of political and economic instability
