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Lionel Messi retired from international football on Monday, ending a career with Argentina that ran more than two decades and produced 124 goals in 203 games.
He announced it on Instagram, posting a photograph of a handwritten notebook entry. The date on it explains the six weeks of speculation that preceded it.
"I wrote these words on July 21st, two days after the final," Messi added in a footnote. "Today, after what happened with my dad, I am even more convinced than before."
Jorge Messi died on Aug. 8 at a hospital in Rosario, the central Argentine city where his son grew up. He was 68, and he had managed Messi's career from the beginning.
The note itself was written in the aftermath of Argentina's defeat to Spain in the 2026 World Cup final. Messi wrote that the decision hurt and continues to hurt in his soul, but that he understood this was the moment, and that he had always given everything, not only in recent years when the team won everything but before that as well, fighting and leaving everything on the field for the shirt.
He held it for six weeks while Argentine reporting suggested the opposite. Coverage in July said he had finalised the decision but would keep playing for several months to ease new players into the squad, and that the Argentine Football Association was preparing a farewell match rather than letting him leave through a social media post. Claudio Tapia, the association's president, said three weeks ago that the decision was purely and personally Messi's and that he should be allowed to relax.
What he leaves is a record that will stand for a long time. Messi is Argentina's all-time leading scorer, its most-capped player and the highest-scoring man in South American football history. He captained the side to the 2022 World Cup, the country's first in 36 years and its third overall, and to back-to-back Copa América titles in 2021 and 2024, ending a 28-year trophy drought.
He had scored eight goals and made four assists in this year's tournament at 39, finishing as its second-highest scorer, before Spain beat Argentina in the final.
This is his second international retirement. He announced the first in 2016 after losing three consecutive finals as captain, then reversed it and went on to win the World Cup six years later.
His club career continues. Messi's contract with Inter Miami runs to 2028, and the Major League Soccer club signed Casemiro this summer to play alongside him.
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