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