Messi scores his 126th goal and leaves the Argentina shirt after 208 caps

Lionel Messi played his last match for Argentina on Tuesday night at the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires, and the scoreline was the least scripted part of it only because the goals arrived late. Argentina beat Benin 3-0. Messi, 39, assisted the first two and scored the third, from the penalty spot in the 71st minute. It was his 126th international goal, in his 208th cap, at the end of 21 years in the shirt.

More than 85,000 people were inside the stadium for a night billed as The Last Tango. Landmarks in the capital were lit in sky blue and white. Fireworks went up over the ground during the anthem. On the way in, Messi wiped his eyes on the team bus as it moved through crowds. When the sides lined up, Benin's captain handed him a gift and a letter and, Reuters reported, looked lost for words.

A minute stolen for the number 10

The match was stopped in the 10th minute, a nod to the shirt number, for a minute-long ovation. The first half ended goalless. After the break Messi set up Nicolás Otamendi, who tapped in the opener. Otamendi has shared 17 years and four World Cups with Messi, and he too was ending his international career on the same night. Messi then laid on the second for Nico Paz, one of the players already discussed as a possible heir to the number 10. The penalty made it 3-0 and gave the crowd the chant it had come for.

The friendly had no qualifying weight. Argentina are the world champions from 2022, and Messi has already said the club chapter continues. The international ledger closes on a number that is easy to misread. One hundred and twenty-six goals is a tally. Two hundred and eight caps is an availability record: he was selectable, and selected, across five World Cup cycles, from Germany 2006 through the title in Qatar and the matches that followed.

The numbers on the shirt he is leaving

Messi's senior debut came on 17 August 2005, in a friendly against Hungary in Budapest. He was 18. The first World Cup was a year later. He has since played in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022, with a final lost to Germany in 2014 and the title won against France in 2022. Copa América titles in 2021 and 2024 sit on the same ledger. Tuesday's friendly against Benin does not add a trophy. It adds a last goal, a last assist pair, and a stadium that stopped play to clap.

Benin were not chosen as a rival. They were the available opponent for a send-off that needed a match, not a final. A goalless first half kept the night from looking arranged. The three goals after the break, two of them made by Messi and one scored by him, gave the script its ending without a blank scoresheet. Otamendi's goal matters because the centre-back's own farewell was easy to lose under the number 10. Seventeen years in the same squad ended on the same penalty spot.

What the night does not settle

The succession is the open item. Paz scoring the second, off Messi's pass, is a photograph, not a decision by Lionel Scaloni. Argentina have other attackers in the current squad, and the reports from Tuesday do not name a new captain. Otamendi's exit on the same night removes another player whose first caps date from the late 2000s. The armband and the number 10 are now vacant together.

Messi's line from the pitch was that he had given it his all. The Monumental crowd did not need the sentence. They had stopped a match in the 10th minute to make the point themselves. The record he leaves is specific: 208 games, 126 goals, a World Cup, two Copa América titles, a debut in Budapest in 2005, and a last penalty in a 3-0 win over Benin, in front of 85,000, with Otamendi scoring beside him for the last time.