Lionel Messi Bookends 21 Years With Argentina Between Red Cards
In his 208th and final Argentina appearance, Messi scored once and assisted twice in a 3-0 win over Benin, then asked the referee for a memento: the red and yellow cards that bookended an international career opened by a red card in 2005. Chinese fans watched the circle close in real time.
Lionel Messi's international career opened in August 2005 with a red card, roughly forty seconds after he came on as a substitute against Hungary. It closed on Tuesday in Buenos Aires, where the referee handed him the red and yellow cards as a parting memento — bookending a career that a red card had opened. Argentina beat Benin 3-0 in the friendly at the Monumental, with a goal and two assists from their captain in his 208th and final appearance for his country.
As the Paper's match report recounted, the 39-year-old spoke for about ten minutes at the center circle afterward: "So many emotions are mixed together. Obviously the first thing I think of is my father... All I can do is say thank you. To wear this shirt for more than twenty years has been an enormous honor." Behind him, Enzo Fernandez wept openly; the midfielder's tears became their own trending topic on Chinese social media within the hour.
On Weibo, where two of the top twenty trending topics were about the match on Tuesday morning, the red-card symmetry did most of the work. A summary liked more than 1,000 times walked readers through it: debuted at 18, sent off in under a minute, and now "his national-team career began with a red card and ends with the referee's gift of red and yellow — the circle is closed." Others skipped the stats entirely: "Why can't the trending tag just say Messi? An era is over."
The farewell closes a 21-year international run that included the 2022 World Cup title, two Copa America championships, an Olympic gold and a runners-up medal at the 2014 World Cup — the trophy case that had, until 2021, been the argument against him. Chinese fans have followed that arc with unusual intimacy; Messi's matches remain premium television programming here.
There was one sour note. The post-match drone show over the stadium, meant to render tribute images in lights, opened by spelling out the name of a sponsor, Sancor Seguros, before moving on to Messi's honors — an arrangement Argentine fans criticized loudly enough to reach the Chinese sports desks on Tuesday.
Messi's Argentina chapter is closed — 208 caps, the national record for both appearances and goals — and the federation now has to plan its first post-Messi cycle, toward the 2030 World Cup, without him. His speech offered no hint of what he wanted next beyond the thanks he kept returning to his father, his teammates and the shirt.