Messi signs off for Argentina with two assists and a penalty in a 3-0 win

Lionel Messi played his 208th and last match for Argentina on Tuesday night, and the team beat Benin 3-0 at a sold-out Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires. More than 85,000 tickets had been sold. He set up the first two goals and scored the third, from the penalty spot in the 71st minute. The Argentine Football Association had asked him back for one game after he said, in the weeks following the World Cup final, that the time had come to stop.

Nicolás Otamendi headed in the opener in the 48th minute, from a corner Messi had taken. Nico Paz curled in the second from a Messi pass. The penalty made it 3-0 and gave Messi the last of 126 goals in an Argentina shirt. He has stood alone as the country's top scorer and as its most-capped player. Among men, only Cristiano Ronaldo has more international goals or more caps, with 146 goals in 234 games. Messi scored 21 of his goals at World Cups, across six tournaments.

Lionel Scaloni, the coach who had him for the 2021 and 2024 Copa América titles and for the 2022 World Cup, sent him out with his sons Thiago, Mateo and Ciro on the pitch beside him for part of the night. The association had billed the match as the farewell he had not taken in July. Argentina lost that World Cup final 1-0 to Spain in New Jersey. Messi said afterwards that the last World Cup had taken a massive toll, and that the dream, his and the country's, had been to become world champions again.

On Tuesday he spoke to the crowd in the language of a man closing a door he had opened in 2005. "I would love to keep coming back forever, because playing for the Argentine national team is the most beautiful thing that can happen to you," he said. He recalled the night the squad returned to Buenos Aires after the 2022 final, and called it one of the happiest days of his career. He then called this one the saddest: saying goodbye to the national team, and to defending its colours. He said he would be in the stands for the players who come after, and he told the crowd he loved them and would miss them.

The retirement is not his first. He stepped away in 2016, after the Copa América Centenario final, and came back. The second spell produced the titles the first had not: Copa América in 2021, the World Cup in 2022, Copa América again in 2024. The loss to Spain in July ended the run of finals he had been winning. His father, Jorge Messi, died at 68 after that tournament. The family context sat under the decision, even where he did not spell it out on the night.

He is not leaving the game. He remains with Inter Miami, and he had just been part of the club's Campeones Cup win. The international retirement removes him from Scaloni's list for the next qualifying cycle and for any farewell tour the association might have wanted to stretch. A single night at the Monumental was the bargain. Benin, ranked far below Argentina, was the opponent chosen so the night could be a ceremony without being a competitive risk. The 3-0 score kept the ceremony intact.

The Monumental is River Plate's ground, not the national team's only home, but it is the building Buenos Aires uses when the number of people is the point. A crowd above 85,000 is close to the practical limit of the rebuilt stands. The association had spent the weeks after July trying to get him to accept the game. He did. The quotes he gave are the record of why he will not do it again.

For Scaloni the practical problem starts now. The attack that has run through Messi for eight years has to be rebuilt around Julián Álvarez, Lautaro Martínez and the younger forwards who came on around Paz. No one in the squad replaces the combination of set-piece delivery, penalty duty and the 126-goal ledger. The coach has time before the next competitive window. He does not have a like-for-like.

Messi's 21 years in the shirt ran from a debut as a teenager to a last tango, as the night was billed, at 39. The number that will sit in the record books is 208 games and 126 goals, with one World Cup and two Copa América titles in the second half of that span. The number that mattered on Tuesday was three: two assists, one penalty, and a scoreline that let him leave with the crowd still singing.