Lionel Messi bids Argentina adieu with goal and two assists in 3-0 win over Benin – as it happened

The 2022 World Cup champion was given a raucous sendoff with plenty of pomp and circumstance. Read Pablo Iglesias Maurer’s minute-by-minute report. Guardian reader Paul reached out via email and is apparently deep in the comments section of a 20-year-old Messi article we published here at the Guardian. I can only hope Guardian reader “snafuclarke” has fully recovered from such a scorchingly terrible take:don’t kid yourselves. messi is currently hugely overrated. the amount of hype this lad gets has never matched his performances on the pitch the last game aside. Continue reading…

Argentina with an easy 3-0 victory over Benin tonight. While the game lacked the moment of individual brilliance we all wanted out of Lionel Messi, he still left his mark on it with a pair of assists and a goal of his own, to boot. Still, it felt like a bit of an anticlimax. Who knows, maybe Messi can be goaded out of retirement once more? Maybe as an overage player at the 2028 Olympics? One more Copa America? I give up.

90 Min (+3): Messi with one final chance on a free kick from 21 yards, dead center. “Like something out of a movie,” the commentator says. Messi, though, puts it over the bar. Min 89: Messi hits the post! Lovely combination play finds Messi 12 yards from goal. His driven effort caroms off the near post – “el palo santo” as they call it on Vix. Again, hard to believe Messi is still sitting on a single goal. Prior to this match I thought