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Lionel Messi Weighed Down For Too Long By Argentina So Retirement Should Come As No Surprise
Appearances can be deceptive, but in Lionel Messi’s case they were extremely revealing.
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By Graham Ruthven (@grahamruthven)
Appearances can be deceptive, but in Lionel Messi’s case they were extremely revealing. With the impact of Argentina’s third final defeat in three years still hitting hard the playmaker fought back the tears. His face grizzly with hair, his eyes bloodshot, he looked tired and weary. Indeed, international soccer had broken Messi.
But even still, the announcement of his retirement from international duty was unexpected. "For me, the national team is over," he said after defeat by Chile in the Copa America final. "I've done all I can. It hurts not to be a champion.” Argentina didn’t lose a final on Sunday, they also lost their greatest ever player.
Of course, critics will claim Messi has shown just how self-centred he really is. His decision to give up at the age of just 29 highlighted his petulance, they have said. But such criticism perhaps doesn’t grasp the full situation Messi found himself in at this summer’s Copa America. His retirement shouldn’t have been so surprising.
It might not be a retirement at all. There are suggestions that Messi’s post-match remarks are designed only to serve the Argentinean FA with an ultimatum after years of tension between the two parties. His relationship with the country’s governing body, and his homeland in general, has never been the easiest and that unrest had been coming to a head recently.
Turbulence between Argentina and Messi can be traced all the way back to 2011 when he was booed off the pitch following another Copa America defeat. Some in his homeland claim he puts club before country, saving his best performances for Barcelona. That sentiment is still held by many in Argentina, despite Messi’s astonishing form for La Albiceleste over the past few years.
“Let him stay in Spain,” one journalist wrote after the defeat to Chile. “Us Argentines don’t want him and don’t need him.” The thing is Argentina does need him, and they also need the other players who have joined Messi in throwing their international futures into doubt (Sergio Aguero, Javier Mascherano, Angel Di Maria and Ezequiel Lavezzi to name a few). Messi, on the other hand, doesn’t need Argentina.
He recognises this, using his power and status to make his stance against the Argentinean FA - who he has criticised for being disorganised, politically unstable and petty. Just 48 hours before Sunday’s Copa America final in East Rutherford Messi took aim at the organisation following the cancelation of the team’s flight to New York. “What a disaster those at the AFA are,” he remarked in an Instagram post.
Maybe his public decision to retire was his way of shifting blame from himself to the Argentinean FA. There remains hope that he only made such remarks in the heat of the moment, and that he will return to the international fold in time for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Surely at just 29 he hasn’t called it quits? Surely it was a political move - an effective one, with the AFA president Luis Segura resigning from his post on Monday.
But regardless of whether he ever wins an international title, Messi will be considered the greatest soccer player of all time. He might have placed the greatest expectations on himself, hoping to quell the one question remaining of him, but nobody should think any less of him for not finding the answer. He never really needed to find an answer.
If Messi feels drained by his duty to Argentina, weighed down by the burden of expectation piled on his shoulders, then the decision to retire is a completely understandable one. Why should he put up with so much when he gets so little out?
Messi will never be loved in Argentina like Maradona was. His homeland never got to know him before he left for Spain as a youngster and so he has always been seen as something of a foreigner, no matter what his passport says. Now he has turned his back on Argentina, they might finally realise how much they needed him all along.