Argentina will say goodbye to Lionel Messi at the Monumental on October 6, closing an international career that has lasted more than two decades. The preparations for Messi’s Argentina farewell include a special shirt, former teammates and an entire evening built around the country’s most decorated captain.
Argentina has staged a goodbye on this scale before. On November 10, 2001, Diego Maradona returned to La Bombonera for a farewell match four years after playing his final official game. Argentina faced a World XI packed with stars, and a football tribute gradually turned into something much more personal.
The names alone capture the occasion. Juan Román Riquelme, Enzo Francescoli, Carlos Valderrama, Davor Šuker and Hristo Stoichkov started for the World XI, with Eric Cantona, Lothar Matthäus and René Higuita among those who came on. Marcelo Bielsa coached an Argentina side featuring Pablo Aimar, Javier Zanetti, Juan Sebastián Verón and a 41-year-old Maradona. Argentina won 6-3, with Maradona scoring twice from the penalty spot.
Yet the score is barely remembered. During the second half, Maradona removed his Argentina shirt and revealed Riquelme’s Boca Juniors No. 10 underneath. After the match, with daughters Dalma and Giannina beside him, he struggled through an emotional speech before delivering the line that became inseparable from the occasion: “Yo me equivoqué y pagué, pero la pelota no se mancha.” He had made mistakes and paid for them, he said, but the ball remained unstained.
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The No. 10 Argentina tried to retire
There was another part of Maradona’s farewell that feels especially significant nearly 25 years later. Before the match, the Argentine Football Association voted unanimously to retire the national team’s No. 10 shirt in his honor.
Maradona was supposed to be its final owner.
FIFA’s tournament-numbering requirements prevented the plan from becoming permanent. Argentina ultimately had to use the number again, and the shirt continued its journey through another generation of players. Riquelme became one of its most prominent wearers. Then Lionel Messi turned it into something inseparable from his own career.
The connection is almost too neat. Argentina tried to place the No. 10 in a museum after Maradona. Instead, Messi eventually inherited its expectations and spent the next two decades building a second history inside the same shirt. His greatest moments for Argentina now include the 2021 Copa América, the 2022 Finalissima, the 2022 World Cup and another Copa América in 2024.
The two farewells are otherwise very different. Maradona had already been retired for four years when La Bombonera honored him. His match was a celebration built around old friends, former rivals and an assembled World XI. Messi enters his goodbye still active at club level and only weeks removed from announcing the end of his international career. Argentina’s match against Benin is a regular international friendly transformed into his final appearance.
Messi enters it with 207 senior appearances and 125 goals for Argentina. The AFA has invited members of the 2022 World Cup-winning team back for the occasion, while the federation has turned October 6 into a broader celebration through its “Gracias, Leo” events around Buenos Aires.
Maradona had La Bombonera. Messi will have the Monumental.
One goodbye ended with Maradona wearing Boca’s No. 10 and telling Argentina that the ball could never be stained. The other arrives after the country spent years believing that same number had already produced its definitive legend.
Argentina once tried to retire the shirt with Diego Maradona. The No. 10 survived.
Lionel Messi gave it another lifetime.
