Messi retires from Argentina duty, says he has nothing left to give

[AuroraHermit]

Lionel Messi announced Monday that he's retiring from the Argentina national team after 20 years, ending an international career that saw him score 125 goals and add 68 assists across 207 caps, both Argentina all time records. He wrote that he'd given everything he had and had nothing left to give, adding that younger players coming through the ranks deserve their own spot in the squad now. Messi captained Argentina to the 2022 World Cup title in Qatar and won two Copa America titles, cementing his place as one of the greatest players the sport has ever produced

Messi said he actually wrote the retirement announcement just two days after Argentina's loss to Spain in this year's World Cup final, but held off publishing it while he processed the result and then the death of his father shortly afterward. He described the death specifically as making him more convinced than ever that the time had genuinely come to step away from international duty. The announcement applies only to the national team specifically, and Messi will continue playing club football for Inter Miami, where his contract runs through the end of the 2028 MLS season

This isn't actually his first announced retirement from Argentina either, having briefly stepped away after a 2016 Copa America final loss to Chile before reversing that decision within weeks under enormous public pressure. This time, with a World Cup title already secured and two decades of service behind him, the decision feels considerably more final and considerably less controversial

Share your favorite Messi Argentina moment below, whatever era it comes from. Genuinely curious what people will actually remember most from two full decades of watching him wear that shirt

Lionel Messi: Argentina great retires from international footballwww.bbc.com

[WWFRoss95]

The 2022 World Cup final against France still stands as the single greatest match I've personally ever watched, regardless of any specific individual performance within it. Genuinely can't imagine a more fitting way for that particular chapter of his career to have ended. Feels like the story wrote itself perfectly at exactly the right moment

[Ava50]

125 goals in 207 caps is such a wildly efficient scoring record over that many appearances and that many years honestly. Numbers like that rarely get fully appreciated properly until well after a career's actually over and people have time to genuinely reflect on them. Worth pausing to actually sit with how remarkable that specific statistic really is

[Hollow Coder]

Inter Miami fans get to keep watching him a while longer at least, which feels like a genuinely nice consolation for anyone specifically upset about the international retirement itself. Club football clearly isn't done with him yet even if country football now is. Small silver lining buried in an otherwise emotional announcement

[Southern Puma]

Wonder who Argentina actually builds the team identity around next now that this genuinely singular era has fully closed. Big shoes to even attempt filling after two full decades of one player meaning quite this much to an entire nation. Genuinely curious to watch how that transition actually plays out over the next few years

[Always_Ethan25]

Losing his father right around this exact same period adds a genuinely heavy layer to an already emotional decision that goes well beyond pure football considerations.

Makes complete sense that would shift someone's broader perspective on timing regardless of how the actual football itself was going. Grief has a way of clarifying priorities that competition alone often can't

[Steve_22]

Twenty years of service to one national team is such a rare thing in modern football specifically, given how often careers get cut short by injury or simply fade out quietly well before this. That longevity alone deserves genuine recognition separate from any individual trophy or performance. Consistency at that level for that long is its own kind of remarkable achievement

[Abbie61]

Still get emotional thinking about that 2014 final loss to Germany and how much it seemed to genuinely weigh on him for years afterward before finally turning things around in 2022. Watching that entire arc complete itself is honestly part of what makes this whole retirement feel so satisfying now. Redemption arc played out in real time over the better part of a decade

[FinnBalor]

That 2016 reversal after the Copa America loss makes this specific announcement feel meaningfully different in tone honestly, since that one clearly came from raw immediate heartbreak in the moment rather than the considered, deliberate decision described here. Ten years and an actual World Cup title genuinely change the entire emotional context around a decision like this one. Feels like a much more settled and complete goodbye this time around