The first time I ever watched Lionel Messi play soccer couldn’t have been more anticlimactic.
Though the player now generally accepted as the greatest in the history of the planet’s most popular sport had already made his first team debut for Barcelona by this time, the setting was far from the bright lights at the then 90,000-seat Camp Nou, Europe’s largest stadium.
Messi was 18, the second-youngest member of Argentina’s under-20 national team, when he and his teammates met the United States on June 11, 2005, in both countries’ first match of what was then called the FIFA World Youth Championship.
Arke Stadion in the small Dutch city of Enschede was barely a third full. The kid who’d become the GOAT was on the bench when Chad Barrett — who’d go on to win one senior cap for the Americans — scored the eventual winner late in six minutes before halftime. Messi, still mostly unknown except to soccer dorks like me, didn’t do much when he entered in the second half of the game, which I watched on a 13-inch television in my cubicle at ESPN The Magazine’s midtown Manhattan office.
Lionel Messi in 2006. (Photo by Luis ACOSTA / AFP via Getty Images)
Of course, Messi started the rest of the way, finishing as the tournament’s top scorer and MVP as Argentina claimed the title.
A year later, I saw Messi live for the first time; he scored for Barça in a 4-1 friendly win over the New York Red Bulls. As he shyly answered questions in Spanish post-game, floppy brown hair hanging over his eyes, I was struck by how tiny he was. This is the guy who some Argentines were already calling Diego Maradona’s heir apparent?
Lionel Messi playing for Barcelona early in his career. (Photo by Tony Quinn/MLS)
“He’s the closest one yet,” Bob Bradley told me when I asked about the comparison a year after that. Bradley, who had just been named coach of the U.S. men’s national team, is as serious as they come. But he couldn’t help light up at the mere mention of Messi, who his squad would face in the opening match of the 2007 Copa América in Venezuela. I used the quote in a short blurb about Messi, writing that the youngster was well on his way to eventually eclipsing Barcelona teammate Ronaldinho as the best player in the world.
Over the almost two decades since, he’s vastly exceeded that prediction and most others, too.
MESSI’S LEGACY WAS cemented during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, but it’s easy to forget now what the mood was like inside Lusail Stadium with less than 30 minutes remaining against Mexico in the Albiceleste’s second group stage match that November outside of Doha. Billed as Messi’s last chance to win the ultimate prize in sports — he’d said he’d retire after the tourney, win or lose — Argentina was in danger of being eliminated with one first round match to go.
(Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Then Messi popped up out of nowhere and stroked the ball past El Tri keeper Guillermo Ochoa, his first of eight goals — including two in the final win over France — on the way to his country’s only World Cup title since Maradona’s in 1986.
With that golden trophy in hand, Messi promptly changed his mind about hanging up his boots. I was at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami in 2024 when he hoisted the Copa América for the second time in three years. In July, I watched him break down in tears on the field as Spain beat Argentina in extra time to wrest the World Cup away from the 39-year-old.
La Roja were worthy champs, yet a wave of sadness engulfed me as I realized that this was probably the last time anyone would ever see Messi wearing that famous baby-blue and white striped No. 10 shirt. Messi was still his side’s best player that day.
Now, as Messi suits up for his send-off match with Argentina on Tuesday in Buenos Aires, I’m filled with gratitude for having been able to cover his career almost from start to finish. Most soccer lovers have never watched him play in person. I don’t take for granted that I’ve seen him so many times I’ve lost count. l’ve been there for the downs — the shootout loss to the Netherlands in São Paulo in the semifinals of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, another to Chile in the Copa final in New Jersey in 2016, after which an emotional Messi vowed never to play for his country again before changing his mind for the first time — as well as the once seemingly unreadable heights of 2022 and ’24.
It’s still surreal to see Messi in MLS and probably will be until he walks away for good, hopefully not before his current contract with Inter Miami expires in 2028. Watching Lionel Messi play soccer — whether it’s on a screen or in the stands or a press box — is a privilege that never gets old. There will never be another player like him. Enjoy it as long as you can.
