Lionel Messi retires from Argentina
At 39, Messi has stepped away from the national team he first played for as a teenager in 2005, closing a story that ran through six World Cups and ended on August 31, 2026, with a shirt hung up for good.
His journey began in 2005 as a teenager off the bench. It continued through three World Cup finals, two Copa América titles and, finally, the trophy Argentina wanted most. On August 31, 2026, Messi announced he would leave the national team, closing a 21-year international career.
For football fans everywhere, the news marks the end of an extraordinary era. Scroll through it below, year by year.
The journey, year by year
Tap a year to open it.
The trophy cabinet
Four major titles arrived in a five-year stretch, after sixteen years of near misses. Tap each trophy to reveal the story behind it.
The career, in numbers
More than numbers
Numbers can describe Messi’s career. They cannot fully describe what he meant to Argentina. For millions of supporters, he was part of their lives for more than twenty years, watched as he grew from a teenager into a captain, watched him lose finals, watched him return, and watched him finally lift the Copa América and then the World Cup.
Argentina will continue without him. Another player will eventually wear the number 10; another captain will lead the team. But nobody can recreate this particular journey, the sixteen years of near misses followed by the years that delivered almost everything.
Thank you, Leo.
He leaves Argentina as a World Cup winner, a two-time Copa América champion, a Finalissima winner, the country’s most-capped player, and its all-time leading goalscorer, after 21 years in the shirt.
The blue and white will carry on.
But the Messi era with Argentina has reached its final whistle.
