When Lionel Messi announced his retirement from the Argentina national team last Monday, the reaction bordered on national mourning. Children cried in schools, journalists shed tears on television, newspapers filled their pages with emotional tributes and a telephone line was even opened for fans to express their gratitude to their idol. All weekend matches in Argentina were briefly stopped in the tenth minute as a tribute to the idol.

“I emptied myself. I have nothing more to give,” Messi wrote in his farewell.

It was an extraordinary end to an extraordinary relationship. For more than two decades, Messi had carried the expectations of a country that could never quite decide what it wanted him to be. He was compared endlessly with Diego Maradona, criticised for not displaying the same kind of passion and, for years, accused of somehow being less Argentinian because he had left for Barcelona as a child.

Yet by the time he walked away, the relationship between Messi and Argentina had been transformed. The player once treated as an outsider had become a national symbol in his own right.

“And we are full,” Jorge Valdano, a World Cup winner with Argentina in 1986, replied to Messi’s farewell. Messi may have emptied himself, but Argentina was full of everything he had given it.

Messi played 207 official matches over 21 years with his national team, an entire lifetime. He scored 125 goals and provided 68 assists. With him on the pitch, Argentina began every match with almost a goal guaranteed. He played in six World Cups, won one in Qatar in 2022, and reached two other finals. The last came less than two months ago in the United States, where, at 39 years old, he had his most productive World Cup, scoring eight........

© Al Jazeera