There are places that are somehow 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 had lost another Copa America final to Chile. Messi had missed in the penalty shootout.
It was his fourth senior international final defeat. A few minutes later, exhausted by trying and failing to deliver the trophy his country demanded of him, he announced that he was done with Argentina.
Ten years later, Messi returned to the same ground for a World Cup final.
He was 39 now. A world champion. A two-time Copa America winner. Argentina’s record appearance-maker and goalscorer.
This time, Spain beat Argentina 1-0 after extra time, Ferran Torres scoring in stoppage time. Weeks later, Messi announced his international retirement for good, closing the book at 207 appearances and 125 goals.
Same stadium. Another defeat. Another goodbye.
Almost everything in between had changed.
The boy who left Argentina and kept choosing it
Any film about Messi and Argentina has to begin somewhere else: Barcelona.
At 13, the boy from Rosario packed his life into a suitcase and crossed the Atlantic to move to Spain, not knowing what lay ahead of him.
Barça became his footballing home, the club that helped fund the treatment for his growth hormone deficiency and then watched him become the greatest player in its history.
He would eventually score 709 goals in 837 games for the club, winning ten league titles and four Champions Leagues.
However, it came at a cost. Barcelona was where Messi’s football was understood. La Masia had shaped the environment around him.
Later, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and Gerard Pique would join him under Pep Guardiola to create the best club team in football history.
In parallel, however, his time with Argentina was different.
Argentina came with pressure. It came with expectations. With Diego Maradona. With 1986. With the expectation that its next genius should live up to the standards set by Maradona’s legend.
Messi could have chosen to play for Spain but opted to wear the blue and white of La Albiceleste instead.
He starred as Argentina won the 2005 Under-20 World Cup and made his senior debut shortly afterwards against Hungary. It lasted 47 seconds before he was sent off.
Even the opening scene of this movie was anticlimactic. It was not even the tip of the iceberg in terms of what was to come.
The cameo that assumes main-character energy
A teenage Messi at the 2006 World Cup. (Photo by Vladimir Rys/Bongarts/Getty Images)
A year later came the World Cup. Germany 2006 feels almost quaint now.
Argentina already had Juan Roman Riquelme, Hernan Crespo, Javier Saviola, Carlos Tevez, Javier Mascherano and Pablo Aimar.
Messi, still 18, wore No. 19 and entered the tournament as the prodigy rather than the protagonist.
Against Serbia and Montenegro, he came off the bench in a 6-0 victory, created a goal and then scored one himself.
A young actor had made his appearance for a fleeting 10 minutes in a star-studded film and had still managed to leave an impression.
There is one small detail that did not have any relevance back then. Sitting on Argentina’s bench that afternoon was Lionel Scaloni, the man who would eventually give Messi the most successful movie of his career.
No one knew that back then.
First flop as the protagonist
By 2010, there was no hiding in the ensemble. Messi arrived in South Africa as the reigning Ballon d’Or winner. Diego Maradona was the coach.
Gonzalo Higuain, Angel Di Maria, Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero and Javier Mascherano were all part of the ensemble, managed by a superstar director.
The 2010 World Cup ended in disappointment as well. (Photo by Joern Pollex/Getty Images)
There was no doubt, however, about who the movie was built around, but Argentina 2010 proved that style without substance is always a recipe for disaster at the box office.
The contrast between Messi at Barcelona and Messi with Argentina has never been more obvious than it was in 2010.
Guardiola’s Barcelona were like a gold-medal-winning synchronised swimming team at the Olympics. Everything appeared almost instinctive.
By contrast, Argentina seemed to be a team full of tremendously talented footballers who simply did not speak the same footballing language.
The result? Germany beat them 4-0 in the quarter-finals.
Messi left South Africa without a goal to his name, and the question marks started appearing for the first time.
Why could Barcelona have “that” Messi while Argentina could not?
2014 and the perfect tragedy
Brazil 2014 provided what felt like the tragic ending Messi’s career did not deserve.
By then, he was Argentina’s captain. He scored four times in the group stage and helped pull Alejandro Sabella’s team through increasingly tense knockout rounds until Argentina reached their first World Cup final since 1990.
And there, inside the Maracana, the story narrowed itself to inches.
Gonzalo Higuain dragged a chance wide. Messi sent an opportunity beyond Manuel Neuer’s far post. Rodrigo Palacio could not convert in extra time.
Then, in the 113th minute, Mario Gotze scored for Germany. Argentina lost 1-0.
So near, yet so far in 2014. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
Messi won the Golden Ball, but the lasting image was not of an individual prize. It was him walking past the World Cup trophy to collect it.
Had his story ended there, it would still have made sense.
The genius who conquered almost everything with Barcelona but could not find that one goal to do it for Argentina. A beautiful football tragedy.
If 2014 was the low, 2015-16 was rock bottom
Except, the scriptwriters were not done. They used a familiar screenwriting trope of pushing the hero even further down to make the eventual pay-off more spectacular.
Argentina lost the Copa America final to Chile in 2015. Then came Chile again in 2016. Three major finals in three summers. Three defeats.
At MetLife Stadium, Messi sent Argentina’s first shootout penalty over the bar. Shortly afterwards, he said the national team was over for him.
At Barcelona, he had spent years accumulating trophies at an unprecedented rate. With Argentina, every summer seemed to invent a new method of heartbreak.
Even the greatest could no longer do it and wanted out.
Circumstances pull the hero right back in
Like a retired detective pinning the badge back on to crack a case no one else can solve, the hero had to come back for Argentina.
In Quito in October 2017, with Argentina in danger of missing the World Cup, Ecuador scored inside the opening minute.
Messi answered with a hat-trick to book Argentina’s place in Russia. However, it was yet another false dawn.
Messi decided to step away from Argentina in 2016. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
Jorge Sampaoli’s team drew with Iceland, collapsed 3-0 against Croatia, escaped the group against Nigeria and then lost 4-3 to France in the round of 16.
Kylian Mbappe, 19 years old, tore through Argentina that afternoon. Messi was 31.
On that night, as a forlorn Messi walked with his head down, commentators quipped about whether football had seen its greatest showman on the biggest stage for one final time.
It had not.
The assistant director who changes the script: Lionel Scaloni
Lionel Scaloni was never supposed to be the glamorous saviour.
He took charge after Russia in 2018, initially as a caretaker, and slowly did what several more celebrated coaches had failed to do.
He built a team. He slowly reduced the dependence on Messi and got the players to function as a coherent group.
Cristian Romero brought aggression. Rodrigo De Paul brought legs and loyalty. Emiliano Martinez arrived with a personality almost as large as his penalty-area presence.
Lautaro Martinez, Leandro Paredes and, later, Alexis Mac Allister, Enzo Fernandez and Julian Alvarez supplied new energy.
The paradox was beautiful: Argentina became less dependent on Messi while becoming more devoted to him.
Scaloni’s quiet revolution eventually ended a 28-year major-trophy drought. At the Maracana in 2021, Angel di Maria’s delicate finish helped Argentina beat Brazil 1-0 and give Messi his first senior international title.
Go back and watch that celebration again. The whistle blows and Messi disappears beneath his team-mates.
For years, Argentina asked him to carry everybody. Now, an entire team protected him.
Qatar: The perfect climax
The crowning moment of a legendary career. (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
Argentina entered Qatar 2022 among the favourites and lost their opening match to Saudi Arabia.
Against Mexico, with elimination suddenly conceivable, the game remained locked until Messi received the ball outside the penalty area and found the bottom corner to perfection.
One swing of the left foot, and the movie survived to stay on the screen for another day. After that came Australia. The Netherlands. Arguments, penalties, fury and the previously reserved Messi snarling his now-famous “Qué mirás, bobo?”
It was a side of the Argentine legend that most people had never seen and a sign of just how determined he was to make the movie a success this time around.
Then came Croatia. Messi against Josko Gvardiol by the touchline, slowing down, accelerating, turning one of the tournament’s best defenders inside and out before placing the ball perfectly for Alvarez.
Argentina progressed to the final. Then came France, the final frontier.
Argentina led 2-0. Mbappe scored twice. Messi scored again. Mbappe scored again. It was like a boxing bout between the superstars of both teams.
Emiliano Martinez then produced his astonishing late save to deny Randal Kolo Muani and take the game into penalties.
Argentina won 4-2 in the shootout after a 3-3 draw. Messi had scored twice in the final.
At 35, after five World Cups and a career spent hearing what he had not done for his country, he finally lifted the trophy.
The relief on his face was palpable. It slowly gave way to happiness, not just on his face but on the faces of millions of football fans who were rooting for it.
The post-credits
Messi’s movie ended in Lusail in 2022 in happy tears. Everything after that was merely the post-credits.
In the 2024 Copa America final, Messi left the pitch injured and in tears against Colombia. Once upon a time, that image would have been fatal to Argentina’s chances.
Instead, the team kept playing. Lautaro Martinez scored in extra time and Scaloni’s side won 1-0. Messi could not finish the game for his team, so the team finished it for him.
Messi decides to walk away. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
And then came 2026. At 39, Messi somehow had one more World Cup run in him: eight goals and four assists as Argentina reached another final.
Spain ultimately denied him a 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 through five Getafe players and turn “Ankara Messi” into football folklore;
If one man can leave Jerome Boateng on the floor and lift the ball over Manuel Neuer at the absolute height of his powers;
If one man can stand over a free-kick against Liverpool, with Alisson Becker in goal and a Champions League semi-final hanging in the air, and bend his 600th Barcelona goal into a corner that hardly seemed to exist;
If one man can arrive at the Bernabeu, the Maracana, Wembley and Lusail and somehow make the biggest stages in football belong to him;
If one man can spend two decades making millions of people, from Barcelona to Buenos Aires and Rosario to Kerala, stop whatever they are doing and dance as though his left foot were a snake charmer’s flute;
Then, maybe the strangest thing is that, somewhere along the way, we began to think all of this was normal.
And perhaps, his greatest gift was always timing.
The perfectly timed pass.
The perfectly timed finish.
The perfectly timed body feint.
And now, the perfectly timed goodbye.
2014 could have been the ending.
2016 was supposed to be the ending.
2018 looked like the ending.
2022 gave him the ending everyone wanted.
2026 gave him the chance to leave on his own terms.
In the end, it was a spectacular movie.
Too painful for fantasy. Far too perfect for fiction.