Anyone who was present at Lionel Scaloni’s press conference immediately after the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina in New Jersey on 19 July and saw his tears, the sobs which prevented him from speaking while he got up and walked out, could tell this was a man weeping not because of defeat in a single match but because he was fully aware that what that particular group of men had been through for the past eight years had come to an end.
Messi’s announcement that he is retiring from international football, posted on Instagram on Monday complete with photos of three handwritten sheets of some anonymous yet corporate-looking headed paper and a Harry Potter Time Turner pen, to the soundtrack of Brindis sung by Soledad Pastorutti, instantly dominated the news and unleashed a barrage of homages, gratitude and joy from all corners. But it’s not exactly a surprise.
“How crazy that the day has come, dear Leo,” Cristian Romero posted, making it clear that this was expected in spite of the unexpectedness. “The day no one wanted to arrive has arrived,” echoed Giovani Lo Celso, who said he had “nine years listening to you, admiring you and learning by your side”. His international teammates highlight how in their childhood they dreamed of meeting him one day, let alone actually play with him. Nico Paz says since he was four years old he “used to watch you play with my dad and we would calculate together whether I would be in time to play with you”.
It’s not just his teammates who are expressing gratitude and nostalgia. On a Buenos Aires street corner someone put a red telephone on a table with a sign saying: “What would you say to Messi?” Passersby picked up the receiver and talked into it: “I’m 86 years old and you have given me the greatest joys in my life. You will be in my heart until the day I die,” one gentleman said. A young boy saw the news and “burst into tears even though I was at school”. A well-spoken woman said “we will miss you because you are an extraordinary being”, a little girl added “you’re the best and the greatest”. An old man signed off “bye, son”.
Influencers, journalists, artists, cultural commentators and psychologists all expressed their gratefulness for Messi being a great human being. “Messi led by example,” the veteran sportswriter Matías Martin wrote, while the coach and motivational speaker Matias “Coco” Gallo Bevegni posted that the World Cup winner “taught me more in defeat than in victory”.
The football pundit Morena Beltrán could not hold back the tears as she explained to her older colleagues that for her generation there is a sense of mourning and emptiness which can only be filled by gratitude, which maybe they have already experienced, because they have seen another God. Psychoanalyst Milagros Filgueras praised the decision to hand-write the note, saying some goodbyes need the body involved. The journalist Pablo Perantuono devoted his column to the “epistolary genre”, noting that a handwritten letter in this day and age is almost a counter-cultural act of originality.
The writer Andrés Burgo highlighted that in 10 of the past 12 World Cups, either Maradona or Messi played, so this truly marks the “end of an era in which grandparents, parents, sons and daughter and grandchildren enjoyed an incredible privilege during almost 45 years. The heir will arrive – we hope – but right now is a time of orphanage. And gratitude”.
Messi revealed that this letter was actually written two days after the final, a cathartic diary-like release, but that on Monday, after “[what happened with] my dad” he was more convinced than ever. The note said: “it’s a decision that hurt and continues to hurt,” but that he understands this is the moment. The poet Valeria Correa Fiz pointed out that he originally wrote “I think”, crossed it out and replaced it with “I understand”. Messi swore he always gave his all, not only these past few years when “everything was won” (he never says “I won”; it’s always “we” or “it” was won) but he has nothing left to give. He’s emptied.
The 39-year-old, however, scored four goals for Inter Miami at the weekend and continues his career at club level, where he clearly still has much to give. He is not retiring from playing football, the thing he loves most. He is retiring from Argentina.
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With two international dates coming up and no rival agreed, no doubt the clarification that there will be no Messi in the squad will impact on the potential fixtures. And not unlike the time when he quit Argentina before, in 2016, the country’s football is in a bit of turmoil. The context and climate include scandals surrounding the Argentinian Football Association, the pressure by some lobbies to privatise football clubs, which are non-profit organisations, and the international furore ensued by several incidents during the World Cup which have seen Argentina landed with some hefty fines, sanctions and suspensions.
The heaviness of the Argentina flag which for so many years visibly weighed him down, turned idyllic when it became the cloak of victory, mattered very much to his father, Jorge. Messi said he wanted to win another World Cup for him. Perhaps his death has somehow freed him from that aspect of his Argentinianness.
And just like last time, the spontaneous visceral response from the Argentinian people is acceptance and relish at the good times lived. That inexplicable sense of pride that comes from being from the same soil as someone who is very good at something and whose magic is still untarnished by the sordid final match against Spain, or any of the criticisms directed at the squad and fans throughout the tournament. If anything, his final tears in front of the stands, like Scaloni’s tears at the press conference, are mirrored in a nation moved profoundly by the generations we have just lived through, perhaps not realising we were living through them.
The huge volume of emotive, sentimental outpouring is rather lovely, and amid it all an enduring image of three little boys walking down a Buenos Aires street with No 10 Messi shirts on their backs signals the way forward, towards a future unknown.