Anyone who was present at Lionel Scaloni’s press conference immediately after the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina in New Jersey on 19 July and saw his tears, the sobs which prevented him from speaking while he got up and walked out, could tell this was a man weeping not because of defeat in a single match but because he was fully aware that what that particular group of men had been through for the past eight years had come to an end. Messi’s announcement that he is retiring from international football, posted on Instagram on Monday complete with photos of three handwritten sheets of some anonymous yet corporate-looking headed paper and a Harry Potter Time Turner pen, to the soundtrack of Brindis sung by Soledad Pastorutti, instantly dominated the news and unleashed a barrage of homages, gratitude and joy from all corners. But it’s not exactly a surprise.
His international teammates highlight how in their childhood they dreamed of meeting him one day, let alone actually play with him. Nico Paz says since he was four years old he “used to watch you play with my dad and we would calculate together whether I would be in time to play with you”. It’s not just his teammates who are expressing gratitude and nostalgia.
On a Buenos Aires street corner someone put a red telephone on a table with a sign saying: “What would you say to Messi?” Passersby picked up the receiver and talked into it: “I’m 86 years old and you have given me the greatest joys in my life. You will be in my heart until the day I die,” one gentleman said. A young boy saw the news and “burst into tears even though I was at school”.
A well-spoken woman said “we will miss you because you are an extraordinary being”, a little girl added “you’re the best and the greatest”. An old man signed off “bye, son”. Influencers, journalists, artists, cultural commentators and psychologists all expressed their gratefulness for Messi being a great human being.
The football pundit Morena Beltrán could not hold back the tears as she explained to her older colleagues that for her generation there is a sense of mourning and emptiness which can only be filled by gratitude, which maybe they have already experienced, because they have seen another God. Psychoanalyst Milagros Filgueras praised the decision to hand-write the note, saying some goodbyes need the body involved. The journalist Pablo Perantuono devoted his column to the “epistolary genre”, noting that a handwritten letter in this day and age is almost a counter-cultural act of originality.
The writer Andrés Burgo highlighted that in 10 of the past 12 World Cups, either Maradona or Messi played, so this truly marks the “end of an era in which grandparents, parents, sons and daughter and grandchildren enjoyed an incredible privilege during almost 45 years. The heir will arrive – we hope – but right now is a time of orphanage. Messi revealed that this letter was actually written two days after the final, a cathartic diary-like release, but that on Monday, after “[what happened with] my dad” he was more convinced than ever.
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