Argentina bids Messi farewell in final national team match, ending an era

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina is girding itself for the once-unimaginable prospect of a national team without soccer great Lionel Messi.

On Tuesday, the 39-year-old Messi is set to bid farewell to international soccer after 21 years, 125 goals, two Copa América titles and a World Cup championship. What would otherwise be an unremarkable friendly match against the West African nation of Benin has become the moment that this soccer-crazed country has long dreaded.

“It feels like an era is ending, knowing he won’t play for the national team anymore,” said Valentino Ruso, 17, who was hanging out with friends in a Buenos Aires park on Tuesday. “I’m sad. I think everyone is upset today. He will be missed.”

Argentines have had an intense, often unforgiving relationship with the shy boy who left his hometown of Rosario at 13 for the youth academy of Spanish club Barcelona. As he grew into a global icon of near-mythical stature, his compatriots adored and abused him, doubted his commitment and accused him of indifference to his own country.

But as he prepares to say goodbye to the national team, his devotion to Argentina is no longer in question. Nor is Argentina’s devotion to its most famous export whose triumphs have served as reminders of national greatness through years of political and economic instability.

“Argentines often say, ‘Thank God I was born at a time when I could experience the miracle of watching Messi play,’” said Andrés Rabinovich, a University of Chicago scholar who has researched soccer’s role in Argentine culture. “It’s hard living in Argentina. Soccer is often one of the few things that offer you some respite, some joy.”

For years, Argentines had debated when and how Messi should leave the international stage — though he'll continue to play for MLS team Inter Miami. His Aug. 31 announcement that he'd be retiring from the national team, weeks after Argentina’s loss to Spain in the World Cup final, prompted an outpouring of gratitude and grief.

“I don’t know if there has ever been a love story between a player and a country as great as the one you built,” his teammate Rodrigo De Paul wrote on Instagram.

The Argentine soccer federation has turned Tuesday’s game — Messi’s 208th — into a national homage dubbed “the last tango.” Some 85,000 tickets to Buenos Aires’ largest stadium sold out in 90 minutes, and members of Argentina’s 2022 World Cup-winning squad and their families were invited back to join the tribute.

During the 2000s and 2010s, Messi amassed trophies with his club and won diehard fans from Barcelona to Bangladesh. Yet a major championship for his own country eluded him.

Where the world saw a supernatural talent, some at home saw an outsider who had never played professionally in Argentina and could not deliver when it mattered most to the nation. Argentine crowds chanted “Diego, Diego,” invoking Diego Maradona, the larger-than-life hero of Argentina’s 1986 World Cup victory — and reminding Messi of the standard he had yet to meet. Messi’s quiet reserve, so at odds with Maradona’s defiant swagger, fueled doubts about his patriotism.

After Argentina lost a third consecutive final in 2016, Messi briefly quit the national team.

“There’s some resentment by the people that stay in Argentina for those who leave, this sense of, ‘They think they’re better than us,’” said Rabinovich, adding that he identifies with Messi as a fellow teenage migrant, having moved to Canada during Argentina's 2001 economic crisis, around the time Messi left for Europe. “The old-school Argentines would say, ‘Diego is the Argentine. Messi is soft, a little Spanish boy.’”

The turning point came in 2021, when Argentina beat Brazil to win the Copa América, South America’s championship, for the first time in 28 years. Messi collapsed to the turf as his teammates, delirious, ran to hug him. The player long accused of feeling too little could not stop sobbing.

“Winning clearly disarmed his critics. That’s how soccer works in Argentina,” said Diego Murzi, a sports sociologist at Conicet, Argentina’s national scientific research council. “Criticism of things off the field goes hand in hand with defeats on it.”

The World Cup victory the following year in Qatar sealed his place as a national hero. Messi had delivered the one prize that had eluded him, and millions of Argentines poured into the streets in collective ecstasy, his name in their chants and his No. 10 on their backs.

“I’ll never forget it. I’d never experienced anything like that, being out there with everyone, celebrating together,” said Antonia Correa, 70, a kiosk owner recalling that day as she waited for a bus in Buenos Aires on Tuesday. “We saw that he wasn’t just an extraordinary player, but an excellent human being.”

In recent weeks, newspapers have hummed with nostalgic tributes and murals celebrating Messi have sprung up across the country. La Nación, a leading Argentine daily newspaper, released “Immortal,” a documentary chronicling his final World Cup run, and published a 196-page special edition devoted to his career. A giant replica of his No. 10 Argentina jersey, emblazoned with the word “Gracias,” was unfurled Monday across a main plaza in his home city of Rosario. And in Patagonia, a 26-meter (85-foot), 70-ton statue of Messi kneeling with the World Cup trophy has towered over passing motorists since June.

Across Argentina, fans who grew up watching Messi as their parents watched Maradona now carry him on their skin, in tattoos of him kissing the World Cup trophy. It was easy to believe the world’s greatest player would always be one of their own. Now even Messi’s No. 10 shirt has no designated heir, with coach Lionel Scaloni saying the decision would wait until after his final match.

“I don’t think we’ll have somebody like him again, somebody with that sort of enduring power,” said Pablo Brescia, a University of South Florida professor who writes about Argentine culture and soccer. “Like Maradona, he’ll be unique — a figure that can’t be repeated.”

Messi will continue playing for Inter Miami, where his contract runs through the 2028 season. But the charged ritual of watching him carry Argentina’s hopes and anxieties into every match is ending.

“Watching Messi play, you felt anything could happen,” Murzi said. "I’ve seen him do things that I don’t think I’ll ever see another player do.”

See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Argentina's Lionel Messi, center, trains for his final game with the national team, an international friendly soccer match against Benin, with teammate Rodrigo De Paul, right, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Gustavo Garello)

Argentina's Lionel Messi trains for his final game with the national team, an international friendly soccer match against Benin, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Gustavo Garello)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California couple has been arrested on child abuse charges following an investigation into a surrogacy scheme involving at least 21 children, authorities said Tuesday.

Silvia Zhang and her husband, Guojun Xuan face several counts of child abuse and conspiracy to commit child abuse, accessory after the fact, and dissuading a witness, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.

“This case is unprecedented. It is horrific. And the physical abuse, beating and punishment that these very young children received, is despicable,” Hochman said during a news conference Tuesday morning.

Prosecutors are seeking a $100 million bail for the couple because of the serious nature of the charges and due to their flight risk potential, Hochman said.

Fifteen children were removed from the couple’s opulent home in Arcadia last year after an allegation of abuse, and another six living elsewhere were also located. They ranged in age from 2 months to 13 years, with most between 1 and 3. Police believe Zhang gave birth to one or two of the children while the rest were born by surrogate.

Hochman said the couple set up a surrogacy agency that they operated from their home and used that agency to hire surrogates throughout U.S.

“The house could only be described as a house of horrors for these incredible young children,” Hochman said.

Zhang and Xuan were first arrested in May 2025 after a hospital reported that their 2-month-old infant had a traumatic head injury, the result of a nanny at the home violently shaking the baby, according to Arcadia police.

Arcadia police did not file charges at the time, in order to finish a full investigation, they said.

Hochman said the couple set up three rooms they called learning centers, where the children spent several hours a day sitting at desks under the supervision of nannies.

Through an extensive surveillance system including motion-activated cameras, the couple watched as their nannies subjected the children to daily beatings and physical abuse, he said.

The nannies were told “not to leave any physical marks on the children,” Hochman said.

Before police arrived to investigate in May 2025, Zhang and Xuan told the children to deny they had been beaten.

Police examined surveillance footage that showed the nannies beating the children. They issued an arrest warrant for the nanny seen hurting a 2-month-old infant, Chunmei Li, but she could not be found.

“There will be a reckoning” for the defendants, one of whom faces more than 17 years in prison if convicted, Hochman said.

Surrogacy is an agreement between parties to have a woman become pregnant, typically through an embryo transfer, and deliver a baby for another parent.

The practice has no federal regulation, leaving it up to states to set the rules if they choose to allow it.

California is considered a “surrogacy-friendly state” because it has clear laws governing the process. Both sides are required to have lawyers, and there must be a written, notarized contract before an embryo transfer takes place.

Investigators have said they were looking into whether the couple had misled surrogates around the country. At least eight women had come forward to say they were aggressively pursued by the couple to serve as surrogates.

The women, many of whom were first-time surrogates, say they were given misleading or incomplete information about the couple’s family situation and intentions.

At least one, Kayla Elliott, is now trying to get custody of a baby she birthed for the couple.

Marcelo reported from New York City.

FILE - An aerial view shows the home of Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan on July 16, 2025, in Arcadia, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)