Messi to bid Argentina farewell against Benin as new era begins

Lionel Messi's international career is drawing to a close, with a formal farewell arranged for a friendly against Benin a week on Wednesday, according to Guardian Sport's Jonathan Wilson.

Before that send-off, Argentina must play two fixtures without him, offering the first real glimpse of life beyond the player who has so often rescued the national team when results have gone against them.

Wilson frames Messi's Argentina career as a story told in two distinct halves, the shape of which explains why this transition carries such weight for the Albiceleste.

In the first of those decades, a persistent narrative took hold that Messi somehow did not fit, that he was insufficiently Argentinian, or that he lacked the same feeling for the shirt shown by others.

That characterisation, Wilson argues, was always absurd, and is better understood now as an expression of public frustration at a long trophy drought that endured despite Argentina fielding one of the three best players the sport has produced.

The point underlines the scale of what Argentina now face. For years, whatever went wrong in a game or a tournament, Messi's individual brilliance offered a route out of trouble that no other side in world football could call upon in quite the same way.

Removing that option does not simply remove a player. It removes the safety net that has repeatedly bailed out an Argentina team through difficult afternoons, leaving coaches and teammates to find solutions of their own when matches are not going to plan.

The two games ahead of the Benin friendly will be watched closely for early signs of how Argentina intend to fill that void, even as the wider football world prepares for a farewell that closes one of the sport's defining international careers.

Messi's appearance against Benin is set to be his last involvement in an Argentina shirt, bringing a formal end to a story that began amid scepticism about his connection to the national team and will finish with him regarded as an icon of it.