Argentina lost the World Cup final on Sunday night, and Buenos Aires threw a party anyway. Beaten finalists, and still the streets filled.
Not the delirious, all-night kind of December 2022. Something quieter, and in its way more moving: thousands of supporters filling the streets around the Obelisco to salute a team that had come within a single goal of keeping the trophy.
Spain won 1-0 after extra time at MetLife Stadium, Ferran Torres side-footing in the only goal early in the second period of extra time after Nico Williams headed Pedro Porro's cross into his path, per ESPN. It was, on the balance of play, deserved. Spain had 20 shots to Argentina's two, and 12 on target to none. Argentina, reduced to ten men when Enzo Fernandez collected a second yellow for upending Pau Cubarsi in second-half stoppage time, did not register a single effort until the 115th minute, a record of futility for a World Cup.
The streets went quiet, then loud
At the final whistle, per the Buenos Aires Times, fans sat in stunned silence. It did not last. The drums started, then the car horns, the fireworks and the old chant of "Argentina, Argentina" rolling out from Palermo down towards the Obelisco. In Rosario, Messi's home city, supporters gathered at the Monumento Nacional a la Bandera.
The gatherings were not confined to the centre. Fans had watched on giant screens in Palermo, spilled out of cafes in Barracas, and crowded the junctions across the capital before drifting towards the Obelisco.
The mood was gratitude, not grievance. "We reached the final, and that's no small achievement," Luciano Ortega, 20, told the paper. "Thanks anyway. Thank you, Argentina," said Marco Moya, 37. Sergio Irrazabal put it more bluntly still: "We've already won a World Cup." Nahuel Tudela, 22, caught the split feeling exactly: "I'm sad, but I still want to thank the team."
A farewell dressed as a defeat
For most of those who turned out, this was the last of Messi at a World Cup. ESPN framed the final as exactly that. The 39-year-old had a subdued evening: one shot, blocked, and 54 touches across the 120 minutes and more, not one of them inside the Spain box. He was dispossessed twice and fouled four times, a captain chasing a game that never quite came to him. When the television cameras found his face, the Obelisco answered with a roar of "Thank you, Leo."
That is the strange comfort of it. Argentina reached back-to-back finals, defending champions who fell at the last, and the crowd seemed to grasp the difference between a beaten side and a broken one. Four years ago the same square heaved for a coronation. On Sunday it turned out for a thank you.
What happens next
Messi made no farewell speech on the night, and no retirement announcement has followed. Whether Argentina have truly seen the last of him in their colours is a question for another week; at 39, another World Cup is almost certainly beyond him, but the international door is not yet closed. The debate belongs to the coming days, not to a square that had come only to give thanks.
Spain, meanwhile, are world champions, and the party moves to Madrid. In Buenos Aires the feeling was harder to name. Pride and grief, sharing the same square, under the same flag. The Obelisco was not really mourning a defeat. It was thanking a generation, and its captain, one more time.
Sources
- Buenos Aires Times
- ESPN
- Cover photo: Lionel Messi / CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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