Messi’s near-perfect World Cup has him as close to the top as he can get. There’s no better time to retire

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Ahead of the World Cup final, Spain coach Luis de la Fuente told a story about his only direct run-in with Lionel Messi.

Many years before, de la Fuente coached the youth team of Spanish club, Sevilla. They were to play their Barcelona counterparts, who featured “this boy called Messi.” The maestro was still an apprentice then, about 16 years old.

De la Fuente was impressed enough by what he heard that he had a player do nothing but follow Messi around during the match. After 70 minutes, the game was scoreless. Messi’s marker received a yellow card. De la Fuente subbed him off.

“And in 15 minutes, Messi scored four goals,” de la Fuente said.

This was not his explanation of why he planned to man-mark Messi. It was de la Fuente’s rueful way of explaining the risk he was taking in choosing not to do that.

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Messi spent the first two thirds of Sunday’s match standing ahead of the thicket in the middle. For the last third, he drifted out to the right. The Spanish let him operate alone in that space. Messi didn’t make them regret it.

Sadly, that may be the lasting impression he leaves on this tournament. When it really counted – really, really counted – Messi was not able to conjure the magic that made such an impression on de la Fuente more than 20 years ago.

Entering World Cup 2026, Messi was already most people’s idea of the best player ever. He’d won the one trophy that tipped him over the edge. But then he’d spent four years making money and being invisible in Miami. Everybody knew why – he was saving his strength for a final World Cup push. Why waste energy in Europe, when he could put it on low battery mode for a payday just as good in America?

It wasn’t clear what people expected from him here, but it wasn’t a best-in-show performance at 39 years old. For seven games, Messi wasn’t as good as he’s ever been. That level may never be touched again, by anyone. But he was at least as influential. Whenever Argentina threatened to give up, Messi was there to save them. He did it against Cape Verde, and again against Egypt, and again against England.

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Statistically, that last performance wasn’t anywhere close to his best. But aesthetically? As a demonstration of will? Messi had never been better.

After that, he was on the edge of something that already seems remote. Not just the best football player ever, but the best something else. Athlete? Performer? Mentalist? Take your pick.

Messi was flirting with the supernatural. A man who could do what he wanted, when he wanted, to trained professionals intent on stopping him. That doesn’t sound like Muhammad Ali. It sounds like Neo from The Matrix. All Messi had to do was do what he’d already done, one more time.

There were opportunities in Sunday’s final moments. A ball flicked in by Messi, then pushed into the goalmouth, but kicked wide by Spain’s Pau Cubarsí. A corner that ended up being launched high over the bar.

Had either of those gone in, Messi would have received all the praise. He’s reached the stage where he gets the architect’s credit for anything any Argentine builds.

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But neither did, and that’s that. In the end, Argentina’s mistake wasn’t leaning too much on the rough stuff or trying to hold out for penalties. It was trusting too much in the guy they’d begun to use as a crutch. This time, he couldn’t hold all the rest of them up.

Afterward, however diminished in the moment, you could still feel his star power. He was the only player U.S. President Donald Trump really tried to engage on the podium. Messi wriggled away from him. Then he went over to the Argentine end of the stands, stared up at the fans and wept.

Messi has never been a raconteur. He hardly speaks. That’s part of why people like him so much. He’s never said enough to offend anyone. But it does leave you grasping at nothing when he has one of these big moments.

“I feel sad,” he was quoted as saying afterward. That’s his best line.

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Everyone else is sad, too, for him, if not for Argentina. His Argentina teammates are all delightfully brutal, but Messi floated above that. It was their brutality that allowed him to do so.

So what now? Back to America? I’m sure it’s lucrative, but seriously, how pointless. Messi is doing nothing in Miami but propping up Major League Soccer, and he doesn’t look all that interested by the project.

He can’t go back to Europe. All that would do is draw comparisons to the player he was in his youth, and make his home life unbearable.

He could do a stop in Argentina, but those aren’t all great memories. The club he started with, Newell’s Old Boys, gave up on him as a child after he grew ill. Barcelona was the club that agreed to fund his medical treatment. Has any good sporting deed ever paid back so handsomely?

So what is there? There’s money wherever he wants to go, for as long as he wants to go. But at this point, all that should matter to him is legacy.

Could he make it back to another World Cup at the age of 43? Maybe. Would he be an impact player? If so, he would be the first to come anywhere close.

The oldest outfield players at this tournament, all of them past stars like Cristiano Ronaldo (41), Luka Modric (40) and Edin Dzeko (40), were ghostly presences as compared to their younger selves. Why would anybody – Argentina least of all – want that for Messi?

The only reasonable thing left for him is to wind down his professional career. He needn’t do it now, but for the sake of posterity, it’s best he do it soon. As of today, the perfect time is always yesterday.

That way he can be remembered as he should be – as the best to ever do it, if not the sainted figure he might have become had he won that one last game.

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