There are places that are in one way or another associated with certain people. For Lionel Messi, one of them stands in New Jersey.
In June 2016, he sat devastated inside MetLife Stadium after Argentina lost another Copa America final to Chile. Messi missed the penalty shootout.
This was his fourth defeat in an international final. A few minutes later, after he was exhausted by trying and failing to deliver the trophy that his country had demanded of him, he announced that he was done with Argentina.
Ten years later, Messi returned to the same stadium to play in the World Cup final.
He was 39 years old now. World champion. Two-time Copa America winner. Goal maker and all-time top scorer for Argentina.
This time, Spain beat Argentina 1-0 after extra time, with Ferran Torres scoring in stoppage time. Weeks later, Messi announced his permanent international retirementTo close the book at 207 matches and 125 goals.
Same stadium. Another defeat. Another goodbye.
Almost everything has changed between them.
The boy who left Argentina and kept choosing it
Any film about Messi and Argentina must start somewhere else: Barcelona.
At thirteen years old, the boy from Rosario packed his life into a suitcase and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to move to Spain, not knowing what awaited him.
Barcelona became his footballing home, the club that helped fund treatment for his growth hormone deficiency and then watched him become the greatest player of all time.
He eventually scored 709 goals in 837 matches for the club, winning ten league titles and four Champions League titles.
However, this came at a cost. Barcelona is the place where Messi’s football was understood. The diamond He shaped the environment around him.
Later, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and Gerard Pique joined him under Pep Guardiola to create the best club team in football history.
But in parallel, his time with Argentina was different.
Argentina came under pressure. It came with expectations. With Diego Maradona. With the year 1986. With the expectation that the next genius will live up to the standards set by the legend of Maradona.
Messi could have chosen to play for Spain but he chose to wear the blue and white Albicelesti instead of.
He starred when Argentina won the 2005 U-20 World Cup and made his debut shortly afterwards against Hungary. It lasted 47 seconds before he was ejected.
Even the opening scene of this movie was disappointing. And it wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg in terms of what was to come.
An engraving that assumes the energy of the main character
A year later came the World Cup. Germany 2006 seems a bit strange now.
Argentina already had Juan Roman Riquelme, Hernan Crespo, Javier Saviola, Carlos Tevez, Javier Mascherano and Pablo Aimar.
Messi, who was still just 18, wore the number 19 and entered the tournament as a prodigy rather than a hero.
Against Serbia and Montenegro, he came on as a substitute in the 6-0 win, setting up one goal and then scoring one himself.
A young actor appeared for 10 minutes in a star-studded movie and still managed to make an impression.
There is a small detail that was not relevant at the time. Sitting on Argentina’s bench that afternoon was Lionel Scaloni, the man who would eventually give Messi the most successful film of his career.
No one knew that at the time.
First flop as the protagonist
By 2010, there was no hiding in the band. Messi arrived in South Africa as a Ballon d’Or winner. Diego Maradona was the coach.
Gonzalo Higuain, Angel Di Maria, Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero and Javier Mascherano were part of the group, which was managed by a star director.
However, there was never any doubt about who the film was built around, but Argentina 2010 proved that style without substance is always a recipe for box office disaster.
The contrast between Messi at Barcelona and Messi with Argentina has never been more stark than in 2010.
Guardiola’s Barcelona were the Olympic gold medal-winning synchronized swimming team. It all seemed almost instinctive.
In contrast, Argentina seemed to be a team full of extremely talented footballers who did not speak the same football language.
The result? Germany beat them 4-0 in the quarter-finals.
Messi left South Africa without a goal to his name, and question marks began to appear for the first time.
Why can Barcelona have ‘it’ Messi while Argentina can’t?
2014 and excellent tragedy
Brazil 2014 provided what seemed like a tragic end that Messi’s career did not deserve.
By then, he was captain of Argentina. He scored four goals in the group stage and helped Alejandro Sabella’s side through increasingly tense knockout rounds until Argentina reached their first World Cup final since 1990.
And there, inside the Maracanã stadium, the story narrowed down by inches.
Gonzalo Higuain missed a long-range opportunity. Messi sent a chance beyond the far post to Manuel Neuer. Rodrigo Palacio was unable to convert in extra time.
Then, in the 113th minute, Mario Götze scored for Germany. Argentina lost 1-0.
Messi won the Ballon d’Or, but the lasting image was not an individual award. It was him who was passing by the World Cup to get it.
If his story had ended there, it would still have made sense.
The genius who conquered almost everything with Barcelona, but was unable to find that goal to achieve with Argentina. A beautiful football tragedy.
If 2014 was the lowest, then 2015-2016 was the lowest.
However, the screenwriters were not finished. They used a familiar screenwriting trope to push the hero down further to make the final payoff more exciting.
Argentina lost the Copa America final to Chile in 2015. Then Chile came again in 2016, reaching three major finals in three summers. Three defeats.
At MetLife Stadium, Messi sent Argentina’s first penalty kick over the crossbar. Shortly afterwards, he said the national team was over for him.
At Barcelona, he spent years collecting trophies at an unprecedented rate. In Argentina, it seemed as if every summer a new way of breaking a heart was invented.
Even the greatest people could no longer do it and wanted out.
Circumstances pull the hero back
Like a retired detective who once again pins the badge to solve a case no one else could solve, the hero had to return to Argentina.
In Quito in October 2017, while Argentina was in danger of missing out on the World Cup, Ecuador scored in the first minute.
Messi responded with a hat-trick to book Argentina’s place in Russia. However, it was another false dawn.
Coach Jorge Sampaoli’s team tied with Iceland, then collapsed 3-0 against Croatia, was eliminated from the group by Nigeria, and then lost 4-3 to France in the round of 16.
Kylian Mbappé, 19, tore Argentina apart that afternoon. Messi was 31 years old.
That night, as Messi despaired with his head down, commentators quipped about whether football had seen its greatest showman on the biggest stage for the last time.
It didn’t happen.
Assistant director who changes the script: Lionel Scaloni
Lionel Scaloni was never meant to be the charming savior.
He took over after Russia in 2018, initially as caretaker coach, and slowly did what many famous coaches had failed to do.
He built a team. He slowly reduced the reliance on Messi and got the players working as a cohesive group.
Christian Romero brought the aggression. Rodrigo de Paul brought legs and loyalty. Emiliano Martinez arrived almost as big as his presence in the box.
Lautaro Martinez, Leandro Paredes, and later Alexis McAllister, Enzo Fernandez and Julian Alvarez, brought new energy.
The irony was beautiful: Argentina became less dependent on Messi while becoming more loyal to him.
Ultimately, Scaloni’s quiet revolution ended a 28-year drought for major titles. At the Maracana Stadium in 2021, Angel Di Maria’s precise finish helped Argentina beat Brazil 1-0 and give Messi his first international cap.
Go back and watch this celebration again. The whistle blows and Messi disappears under his teammates.
For years, Argentina asked him to carry everyone. Now, a whole team has protected him.
Diameter: ideal peak
Argentina entered the Qatar 2022 Championship among the favorites and lost its opening match to Saudi Arabia.
Against Mexico, with elimination suddenly expected, the game remained closed until Messi received the ball outside the penalty area and scored perfectly into the bottom corner.
One swing of the left foot, and the film survived to stay on the screen for another day. And then came Australia. Holland. Arguments, penalties, anger and the previously reserved Messi now roaring his fame “What are you looking at, you idiot?”
It was a side of the Argentine legend that most people had never seen before, and a sign of how determined he was to make the film a success this time around.
Then came Croatia. Messi vs. Josko Gvardiol On the touchline, he slows down, accelerates and turns one of the best defenders in the tournament inside and out before laying the ball perfectly for Alvarez.
Argentina qualified to the final. Then came France, the final frontier.
Argentina led 2-0. Mbappe scored two goals. Messi scored again. Mbappé scored again. It was like a boxing bout between the stars of both teams.
Emiliano Martinez then made a stunning late save to deny Randall Kolo Mwani and take the game to penalties.
Argentina won on penalties 4-2 after a 3-3 draw. Messi scored two goals in the final.
At the age of 35, after five World Cup finals appearances and a career spent hearing about what he had not done for his country, he finally lifted the trophy.
The relief on his face was evident. It slowly gave way to happiness, not just on his face but on the faces of millions of football fans who were cheering her on.
Post-credits
Messi’s film in Losail in 2022 ended with happy tears. Everything after that was just post-credits.
In the 2024 Copa America final, Messi left the field injured and crying against Colombia. Once upon a time, that image was fatal to Argentina’s chances.
Instead, the team continued playing. Lautaro Martinez scored in extra time and the Scaloni team won 1-0. Messi couldn’t finish the game for his team, so the team finished for him.
Then came 2026. At 39, Messi somehow had another World Cup appearance: eight goals and four assists as Argentina reached another final.
Spain eventually denied him his second world title in New Jersey, winning 1-0 after extra time. There was no fairy tale, but he no longer needed one.
Because if one man can dribble past five Getafe players and turn “Ankara Messi” into football folklore;
If one man can leave Jerome Boateng on the ground and loft the ball over Manuel Neuer with absolute power;
If one man could stand over a free-kick against Liverpool, with Alisson Becker in goal and the Champions League semi-final hanging in the air, and bend his 600th goal for Barcelona into a corner kick that barely seemed to exist;
If one man could make it to the Bernabeu, the Maracanã, Wembley and Lucille and somehow make the biggest stages of football his own;
If one man could spend two decades making millions of people, from Barcelona to Buenos Aires and from Rosario to Kerala, stop whatever they were doing and dance as if his left foot were a snake charmer’s flute;
And perhaps the strangest thing is that, somewhere along the way, we started to think that all of this was normal.
Perhaps his greatest gift has always been timing.
The pass is perfectly timed.
The ending is just in time.
A body trick with perfect timing.
And now, a well-timed farewell.
2014 could have been the end.
2016 was supposed to be the end.
2018 seemed like the end.
2022 gave him the ending everyone wanted.
2026 gave him the chance to leave on his own terms.
In the end, it was an amazing movie.
Too painful to imagine. So perfect for imagination.
