From Newsgroup: rec.sport.soccer

I guess this isn't really "news", but today it has been made official.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/aug/31/lionel-messi-retires-from-international-football-argentina

Let's get some numbers out of the way: from his debut against Hungary in Budapest, on August 17th, 2005 (aged 18) to the 2026 World Cup final it
was 207 games and 125 goals, 71 of these in competition games (6 World
Cups and their qualifiers and 7 Copa Americas) and 54 in friendlies.
Messi scored upon 45 different national teams, his biggest victim having
been Bolivia, with 11 goals, though Argentina's old rivals weren't
really spared (Uruguay is 4th in the list, with 6 goals, and Brasil is
5th, with 5).

With 21 goals in 34 games, he is the second all-time goalscorer of World
Cup history, having been overtaken by Mbapp|- in the third place playoff tennis match between France and England. In Conmebol qualifiers he holds
the all-time record, with 36 goals in 72 games. And in Copa America he
fell three goals short of Zizinho and Norberto M|-ndez, having scored 14
times in 39 games.

Titles with the albiceleste, though, took a while to come by. Argentina reached finals and lost in 2007, 2014, 2015 and 2016. In the last of
these, after having missed one of the penalties in the final shootout
against Chile, Messi even retired prematurely from the national team, a decision he would soon revert. In 2021 he finally broke through: a 1-0
win over Brasil, at Maracan|u, yielded him his first ever international
title. The defining image of the tournament was Argentina's entire team running towards him on final whistle. He probably deserved a better
scenario than a near-empty stadium in a Covid-ravaged country, but for Argentina it didn't matter: for them, such a win would only have been
bettered had it came in 2014 instead.

From that win onwards Argentina went on from strength to strength,
going on to win the World Cup in 2022. Messi, who was yet to score in a
World Cup playoff match, scored five goals in Argentina's four do-or-die
games on the way to the title, including two in the final itself. Then,
almost in passing, came his third title, that of Copa America 2024,
again in the US, the place of his earlier retirement, and which set
Argentina as record Copa America holders with 16 titles (overtaking
Uruguay's 15). By then he probably no longer had any ghosts from 2016
around haunting him, but if any still remained, they were then
definitely laid to rest.

For a long time Messi had to deal with a heavy burden over his
shoulders: comparisons with Maradona. As far as the national team is concerned, before 2021 he would have fallen short at those, but given
what happened since, I'm not sure that's the case anymore. I happily
stay on the fence when it comes to comparing the two, and I suspect that nowadays, for Argentinians, it doesn't really matter at all either.

How will Argentina cope with his retirement? I have no idea, you don't
just replace a player like that, even though they do seem to have a good enough squad, with competent enough management options, to remain
competitive for years to come.

Well, for something that wasn't really news, this post has gone on for
(way too) long enough already. Best regards,

Ll|-o
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2