The Number 10 Shirt Must Not Retire With Messi

The Emotional Legacy of a Legend

When Lionel Messi announced his retirement from the Argentina national team, the reaction wasn't just about sports—it was national grief. In schools across Argentina, children cried. Television journalists wept in front of cameras. Newspapers published heartfelt tributes and even opened a hotline for fans to express their gratitude to their idol. The country stopped its weekend matches for ten minutes to honor him.

It was an extraordinary end to an extraordinary relationship. For more than two decades, Messi had carried the expectations of a country that could never quite decide what it wanted him to be. He was compared endlessly with Diego Maradona, criticized for not displaying the same kind of passion, and accused of somehow being less Argentinian because he left for Barcelona as a child.

Yet by the time he walked away, the relationship between Messi and Argentina had been transformed. The player once treated as an outsider had become a national symbol in his own right. As Jorge Valdano, a World Cup winner with Argentina in 1986, put it, "Messi may have emptied himself, but Argentina was full of everything he had given it."

The Numbers Behind the Symbolism

Messi played 207 official matches over 21 years—a lifetime for a footballer. He scored 125 goals and provided 68 assists. With him on the pitch, Argentina began every match with almost a goal guaranteed.

He played in six World Cups, won one in Qatar in 2022, and reached two other finals. The last came less than two months ago in the United States, where, at 39 years old, he had his most productive World Cup, scoring eight goals and providing four assists.

"And we are full," said Jorge Valdano after Messi's farewell. "Messi may have emptied himself, but Argentina was full of everything he had given it."

Messi's final great display came in the semifinal against England in Atlanta. Argentina trailed until the final minutes before staging a spectacular comeback to win 2-1—arguably one of the most celebrated victories in national team history.

More Than Just Football

The rivalry with England is not just about football. It's deeply tied to the Malvinas Islands dispute and the 1982 war. After the semifinal, players unfurled a defiant anti-colonialist banner asserting Argentina's claim, symbolizing a victory over what they call "the old Empire." For Argentinian football, it inevitably evokes another number 10: Maradona, whose defining 1986 World Cup included that other historic victory over England.

Messi's own victory over England would prove to be his last great display. Four days later, there was little left. Exhausted, he was barely involved as Spain dominated the final but needed extra time to win 1-0. "My legs gave out on me," he later wrote in a public letter to his father, who died 20 days after the match.

What others saw as gracelessness in defeat was also a farewell. Messi already knew this was goodbye. And for the first time, his dying father could not be there with him.

A Symbol of Persistence

Messi had once been criticized relentlessly in Argentina because, for all his success elsewhere, he spent more than a decade failing to win a major title with the national team. He even walked away from it once, in 2016, before coming back.

Today, he leaves as a symbol of persistence—a rarity in times when everything is fleeting. His departure has also prompted calls for Argentina to retire the number 10 shirt in his honor.

The Tradition of Number 10

The Argentine Football Association (AFA), which published an emotional farewell video, will not do so. In official competitions, FIFA's squad-numbering rules make that impossible. Argentina has been here before.

When Diego Maradona died in 2020 during the social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the grief was overwhelming. There were calls then too to retire the number 10—but doing so would have taken the shirt away from Messi, who had worn it for Argentina since 2009 and was still writing his own history in it.

That matters because in Argentinian football, the number 10 has never been just a squad number. Traditionally worn by the great creative player, it became a distinction reserved for the true genius of the team. Maradona gave it eternal significance after Mexico 1986. Messi then made it his own.

Generations of Great Players

Pele had already made the number 10 synonymous with footballing genius on the world stage, and generations of great players followed. But nowhere has the shirt carried quite the same weight as in Argentina, where it passed from Maradona to Messi.

Maradona and Messi played in 10 of the last 12 World Cups in which Argentina competed. Each won one: Maradona in 1986 and Messi in 2022. Together, they scored 29 World Cup goals.

The numbers tell us how much Argentina owed them on the pitch. They do not explain what each came to mean beyond it. And the two men could hardly have been more different.

Diego was all excess, generosity and caprice. Millions of Argentinians became his "emotional slaves," as the Spanish journalist Ramon Besa once wrote. Leo, by contrast, has always been far more reserved, perhaps because he witnessed Diego's decline at close quarters and saw the price of fame.

Messi did not inherit Maradona's number by becoming another Maradona. He carried the same enormous expectation in an entirely different way and, eventually, made the number his own. Whoever comes next will have to do the same.

Hope for the Future

These are days of mourning and orphanhood for the national team. Argentina has lost Maradona, and now, from the pitch at least, it has lost Messi. But Argentina has always been a factory of great players, and football lives on the hope that there can always be another.

In Spanish, we say "no hay dos sin tres": "There is no two without three." There is no third yet. Perhaps there never will be another Maradona or another Messi. But retiring the number 10 would mean giving up on the possibility.

Argentina is not ready to do that.