For years it circulated almost like a football myth — the day Argentina “saved” Lionel Messi before he ended up playing for Spain. But rarely had the story been told with as much detail as now. At 76 years old, José Pékerman revealed the full tale during the Olé Summit, describing a last-minute operation that came frighteningly close to failing… and that ultimately changed the entire history of modern football.

The Warning From Europe and the Fear of Losing a Once-in-a-Generation Talent

Pékerman explained that after leaving the senior national team, he continued traveling to Europe for his coaching education. On one of those trips, he heard a warning that stunned him: the Spanish technical staff had become fascinated with a 17-year-old attacker they already viewed as a generational jewel.
That teenager — who was beginning to shine at La Masia — was Lionel Messi.

According to Pékerman, Spain had everything ready to call him up for the 2004 U-20 World Cup.
“They already had the paperwork prepared,” he admitted.
And had that call-up happened, FIFA rules would have prevented Messi from representing any other country at youth level. Argentina was days away — unknowingly — from losing the most important player in its history.

An Emergency Plan: Tocalli, Grondona and One Crucial Friendly

When Pékerman returned home, he immediately spoke with his close friend and assistant Hugo Tocalli, who had already assembled the squad for the upcoming South American U-20 Championship. Tocalli’s initial reaction was pure disbelief:
“How are you going to tell me there’s a new kid now?” he recalled, laughing.

But urgency overruled everything.

Pékerman insisted on one condition:
Messi didn’t need to play the tournament — he only needed one official friendly, properly recorded by FIFA, even if it was just a single minute. That was enough to lock him to Argentina and block his eligibility for Spain.
It became less a football decision and more a bureaucratic race against time.

Next came the order to Julio Grondona: organize a match immediately… and host it at the stadium of Argentinos Juniors, the birthplace of Diego Maradona — a symbolic detail Pékerman didn’t want to ignore.

The Friendly That Changed Football History

The match came together almost instantly: Argentina U-20 vs Paraguay U-20.
The game ended 8–0, and among the 22 players, one teenager quietly hinted at the phenomenon he would become. With those official minutes, Messi became Argentine forever.

From one day to the next, Spain was out of the picture. The operation had worked.

A Historic Rescue

That nearly clandestine, last-minute maneuver allowed Argentina to keep the footballer who would later transform the destiny of their national team.
Without that friendly, without that urgency, without Pékerman’s intuition, it’s entirely possible that the greatest player of all time might have worn red… and not sky blue and white.