Messi walks away from Argentina after nearly 20 years, a journey that took him from the bench to world champion

There's an image that's already burned into memory forever: Messi on his knees on the grass, in tears, as the stadium around him turns into a Tower of Babel of languages all shouting his name. That scene sums up, without needing anything else, what his time with the Argentina national team meant. And now, with the announcement that he won't play for his country again, that photograph carries even more weight. It's no longer just another chapter, it's the closing of a story that began almost 20 years ago.

Because it's worth remembering where all this started. Messi's World Cup debut came in 2006, and he didn't even play in the loss to Germany that ended Argentina's run: Jose Pekerman chose to leave him on the bench. He was a long haired kid, a colt with obvious talent but not yet the weight of the captain's armband. Four years later, at South Africa 2010, his coach was Diego Maradona, and that pairing produced one of the most beautiful snapshots of their relationship: the embrace, the advice, the bond between two geniuses that the country, with its habit of comparing everything, had tried for years to pit against each other.

That comparison, in fact, was an unfair burden Messi had to carry for a long time. "He doesn't sing the anthem," "he doesn't run like he does at Barcelona," people said. And yet he never stopped pushing, never stopped coming back, never stopped trying.

The breaking point and the return

Brazil 2014 left another painful image: Messi watching the World Cup trophy from a distance after losing the final to Germany. That wound was followed by two straight lost Copa America finals, and in June of 2016, worn down, he announced he was stepping away from the national team. His words were blunt:

I already tried so much, this is the third final, I tried to become champion with Argentina. It didn't happen, I couldn't get it done.Lionel Messi

But just three months later he was back. Hair dyed blond, same stubborn drive as ever. The 2018 World Cup in Russia was a nightmare, ending in a Round of 16 exit against France with a team, Jorge Sampaoli's, that never found its footing. Not even with Messi on the field was it enough.

Everything changed when Lionel Scaloni took over. Doubted at first because of his lack of experience, he ended up building a team around Messi that understood him and had his back: Emiliano "Dibu" Martinez, Enzo Fernandez, Alexis Mac Allister, Julian Alvarez, Lautaro Martinez, among others. With that group came a Copa America, then another, a Finalissima title, and finally, the crowning achievement in Qatar 2022: the World Cup that had once seemed out of reach became real in Lusail.

A legacy beyond comparison

After Qatar, Messi kept playing, now with Inter Miami, and kept breaking records. As tournament after tournament went by, he left behind every possible comparison, including the one that for years pitted him, against his own wishes, against Cristiano Ronaldo. Today, with the announcement of his retirement from the national team, what remains is a career that spanned generations: from the bench in 2006 to the world champion's podium, from unfair rejection by part of the public to unanimous adoration.

Maradona once said something that seems to describe exactly what Messi experienced at the top: "When you're up there, high up, there's no pressure gauge. I looked down and saw a lot of mediocre people who thought they were important." Messi lived with that solitude for nearly two decades and, even so, never stopped being the same kid from Rosario who started out kicking a ball around on a dirt lot.