“The last Messi.” It’s hard to write those thirteen letters. Thirteen, precisely thirteen: the number that breaks the harmony of twelve, the one that governs the months of the year, the apostles, the signs of the zodiac and the hours of the clock. Twelve seems made to close cycles; on the thirteenth, however, to announce farewells. Although little Lio was 13 years old when he was welcomed into Barcelona’s Catalan Masía. Congratulations thirteen!
Even so, there is something that refuses to be typed: “the last Messi.”
One has already lived with other last ones: the last Mohican, the last drink, the last tango in Paris. But Messi never belonged to that end-of-the-line family. Messi was always the first. The first to surprise from his giant-eating thumb stature, the first to thrill from modesty and to move simply by being himself, the first to turn the impossible into routine and the extraordinary into custom. At least in this unique century that we have to go through, Messi is unique. That is why there is no “last Messi”. The latter belong to everyday life; the only ones, to history.
Even the language seems to refuse to put it behind such a definitive word. It sounds strange. That ‘last’ associated with Messi sounds bad. No one inhabited the exception so naturally since the world became digital, cloudinterconnected and smart. No one, in this era where almost everything is repeated, copied or imitated, embodied her as her original spirit of a timid little boy and daring pasture boy, because originals, like him, appear with the frequency of eclipses.
Messi belongs to an endangered species. Or, perhaps, it is something more nostalgic: it is the last example of a species that no longer reproduces: that of ball magicians. Those who played to win, yes, but also to amaze; those who understood football as a competition and as a work; those who left records and statistics for archivists and memories for people, their own and others. In a time where almost everything is measured, calculated and optimized from vulgarity, even in football, Messi continued doing the oldest and strangest thing in this game: turning a field into a stage and a play into an emotion.
Perhaps that is why it is difficult to imagine a successor. Because there will be many depositaries of the number ten; but heir to the brilliant artist, no. There are fewer and fewer of them. Perhaps none more of his caliber. One refuses to understand that the next eight games in the National Team will be the last ones we will see live and direct. It’s hard to accept it because for more than two decades we were accustomed to the illusion that there would always be another game, another goal, another impossible dribble, another afternoon to marvel at. As if time, which takes everyone, had signed a secret truce with him.
But not. Also for the chosen ones there comes the moment when history begins to write the final word, the one that one refuses to hear and does not want to reproduce.
If it came for Fangio, Diego and Nicolino, and also for Gardel, Borges and Quinquela, the end of a fantasy made flesh should not hurt us so much. Because, if we use our brain and not our heart, his imminent farewell will sadden us less: we will understand that it will, perhaps, be the end of Messi in the National Team, but not the end of Messi as a star. Not yet. We won’t be losing it; We will barely stop seeing him dressed in the colors that Belgrano bequeathed us. We will still have that old Argentine custom of knowing that the genius, somewhere in the world, continues to play.
Maybe in Miami or Newell’s, where the Messi fan lives. Or perhaps in the Club Leones FC of Rosario that his family founded this year, which already plays in Argentina’s 1st C and is chaired by his brother Matias. Maybe in the Catalan UE Corneliá of the Spanish 5th division that he bought this year. Or in the project he shares with his friend Luis Suárez in the Uruguayan Deportivo LSM. It doesn’t matter where. As long as there is a ball rolling and Messi behind it, it seems to me that the word “last” will continue to sound premature. Because with some, selectly chosen, age doesn’t matter: it matters that they still play.
In fact, in the middle of the 2026 World Cup and tri-national, between Argentina’s first and second games, he will turn 39 on June 24. And? Wines also get older and improve. Classics also age and do not go out of style. Calendars stopped measuring Messi a long time ago. It is measured by emotions. And on that table he is still young. Documents care about years; to talent, no. Wrinkles count the time of ordinary men, not that of the privileged. Messi stopped competing against rivals a while ago: he plays against astonishment, and he still beats them. Therefore, when that birthday comes, no one will look at the number. We will look at the ball at his feet. As usual.
This Tuesday, June 16, the last show will begin. And the madness of the stadiums exploding will probably reach its highest point on Sunday, July 18, the day of the final: the day of the last, endless applause before the lights go out. I can hear you… In New York, the capital of the world – they say – they will applaud his goodbye, they will do so after going hoarse shouting his 117th goal, or 120th, or whatever it may be, scored for the benefit of the Argentine team and the grace of all his compatriots.
By then, Lionel Messi will have amazed us against Algeria, Scotland, Jordan and five other teams and will have played in his sixth and last World Cup. Perhaps he lifted the Cup for the second time wearing the national jersey more than 200 times. And, as always, he will have carried the consecratory number 10 on his back. That 10 that Pelé immortalized, that Puskas, Eusebio, Ronaldinho and a select few others exalted, and that Maradona elevated to mythical dimensions.
That 10 that, with Diego, seemed to have already reached the ceiling of the football firmament, where the gods of the game live. And yet, a boy appeared that the know-it-alls of Argentine football, with short eyes and close flight, failed to see: the skinny Lio, the kid whom “those” specialists considered too fragile to go far.
It was he who showed that, for number 10, there was still a step above the impossible. Not to dethrone Pelé, Maradona or any of the immortals, but to sit at their table and expand the legend. To push that symbol a little closer to eternity and elevate it, definitively, to the high altar of football. Messi did not lower anyone from Olympus: he simply made his peak bigger.
How he grew bigger, daily, with his silent human simplicity, a gift that is also part of his heritage, as much as the US$1.1 billion that, it is estimated, he has already accumulated. A thousand days ago, in these same pages, I wrote that I was the most loved man in the world. It still is and probably will be for a long time. That is a much more difficult title to win than any of those disputed on a field; It is a goal that almost no one manages to score. Because just as it is difficult to be Messi on the playing field, it is also difficult off it. From there the myth is born. Hence the legend that, unlike so many others, had the privilege of being built during his lifetime.
