Lionel Messi stood near midfield and stayed there while the Spanish players ran toward one another and his teammates sank into the grass. Then he cried.
Spain won the 2026 World Cup final 1-0 at MetLife Stadium on July 19, with Ferran Torres scoring in the 106th minute. Argentina had been down to 10 men since the end of regulation. Emiliano Martínez made 12 saves, the most any goalkeeper has managed in a World Cup final, and Spain outshot Argentina 20-3.
Messi was 39, back in the stadium where a defeat 10 years earlier had pushed him to announce that he was finished with Argentina. That first breakdown looked like an ending and turned into the hinge on which the best chapter of his international career swung. The second came after he had won everything the first had denied him.
A 2016 defeat in the same stadium ended in a seven-week retirement
MetLife Stadium hosted the Copa América Centenario final between Argentina and Chile on June 26, 2016. Messi was 29, the best player in the world and the central figure in a national argument. He was a serial winner at Barcelona. With Argentina, every near miss became evidence in a prosecution: a 2014 World Cup final lost to Germany, a 2015 Copa América final lost to Chile.
The teams were scoreless after extra time in New Jersey. Messi sent Argentina’s first penalty over the crossbar and Chile won the shootout 4-2. Outside the dressing room afterward he told reporters: “That’s it, the national team is over for me. Four finals. It is not for me.”
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The retirement lasted seven weeks. Teammates and Argentina’s president urged him to reconsider, and fans gathered under a single appeal: Don’t go, Leo. He reversed the decision on Aug. 12, 2016. The failures continued. Argentina went out of the 2018 World Cup in the round of 16 and finished the 2019 Copa América without a title.
His talent held steady. What changed was the team around him and his relationship with the country he represented. A younger group arrived without the old resentments. Coach Lionel Scaloni built a side that would run for Messi and still trust him to decide the moments that mattered. The captain, once accused of emotional distance, became the team’s most visible believer.
Barcelona paid for his growth hormone treatment when he was 13
Messi was born in Rosario in 1987 and diagnosed as a child with a growth hormone deficiency his family could not keep paying to treat. Barcelona agreed in December 2000, after a trial in Spain, to sign the 13-year-old and cover his medical costs. Sporting director Carles Rexach recorded the commitment on a paper napkin, which sold at Bonhams in May 2024 for £762,000, about US$965,000.
He founded the Leo Messi Foundation in 2007, which funds health care and schooling for children in at-risk situations.
He made his Barcelona debut in 2004 and spent 17 seasons turning crowded penalty areas into private space. Defenders knew he wanted the ball on his left foot and could not stop him. He seemed to slow matches without slowing himself, waiting for an opponent’s weight to shift before moving through the opening.
In 2012 he scored 91 goals for club and country in a single calendar year. He won league titles and Champions Leagues, and he took a record run of Ballon d’Or awards. He became Barcelona’s leading scorer.
Diego Maradona had won Argentina a World Cup in 1986 and left behind a national mythology of defiance and triumph. Messi, quiet by temperament and formed in Barcelona, was treated at times as a genius who belonged somewhere else, and every international defeat revived the comparison.
Three major titles in four summers changed how Argentina judged him
Argentina beat Brazil at the Maracaná in the 2021 Copa América final, giving Messi his first major senior title with his country. His teammates sprinted toward him at the whistle before they celebrated anything else.
A year later in Qatar, Argentina lost its opening World Cup match to Saudi Arabia and rebuilt the tournament one night at a time. Messi scored against Mexico when the campaign was close to unraveling and created a goal against the Netherlands with a pass few players would have attempted. The final against France swung from control to chaos and ended 3-3. Argentina won on penalties.
Messi lifted the World Cup at 35. The trophy ended a debate that had distorted the way his career was discussed.
Argentina added another Copa América in 2024, giving Messi three major titles in four summers.
Eight goals at 39 gave him the World Cup scoring record
Messi had spent the closing years of his club career in North America with Inter Miami, and Argentina arrived at the 2026 World Cup as defending champion.
He scored a hat trick against Algeria in Argentina’s first group match on June 16, at 38 years and 357 days, the oldest player to do so at a World Cup. The match fell 20 years to the day after his World Cup debut as a substitute against Serbia and Montenegro in 2006. A brace against Austria six days later took him past Germany’s Miroslav Klose, who had held the tournament scoring record with 16 goals since 2014. Messi finished the World Cup with eight goals.
Messi could no longer dominate every minute with acceleration, so he chose his interventions. He drifted away from the ball and appeared in the one channel that mattered once the defensive line relaxed.
Spain controlled the final and won it in extra time
Spain held possession and territory in the final, and Martínez kept out the Barcelona forward Lamine Yamal along with most of what else arrived. Enzo Fernández took a second yellow card in the third minute of stoppage time at the end of the second half, and Argentina played all of extra time a man short. Torres, a substitute in the 62nd minute, buried a left-foot shot under the crossbar at the start of the second period of extra time.
Messi accepted his runners-up medal and walked toward the Argentina supporters. He took off his boots. In stockinged feet, arms held behind his back, he listened while they sang. Ten years earlier the same building had amplified his isolation.
Argentina is planning a home tribute match before his exit
Messi made no retirement announcement after the final. Argentine reporter Gastón Edul of TyC Sports said in the days afterward that the moment had not arrived, and Argentine media reported that the football federation was planning a home tribute match. Another World Cup would place him at 43.
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