In 2016, Messi left the national team in tears. He had lost another final and called it quits.
The photo on the left shows him like that: head bowed, the weight of the world on his shoulders. It looked like the end of the story.
But it wasn’t. He came back. And in the photo on the right, he is holding the trophy he was missing, in Qatar in 2022. Six years and an enormous amount of patience separate the two images. He lifted the Copa América twice, won the World Cup, and played in two more finals, in 2014 and 2026.
Now it’s time for him to say goodbye, and this time he is doing it his way.
The letter is three pages long, handwritten. He wrote it on July 21, two days after losing the 2026 World Cup final to Spain. No one saw it until August 31, when he published it. Before that, on August 8, his father, Jorge, had died. According to CNN, that made him more convinced than ever.
He wrote: “It was a decision that hurt and still hurts deeply, but I understand that this is the moment”.
He is 39 years old and has six World Cups under his belt. More than twenty years wearing the sky blue and white. He bids farewell on Tuesday, October 6, at the Monumental, against Benin, with tickets selling out in minutes.
The one who left in tears after losing now bids farewell in tears of gratitude.
Time bids farewell to some. An entire country bids farewell to him.