When Argentina secured the right to face Spain in Sunday afternoon’s World Cup final, the mouthwatering showdown sparked renewed interest in one of international soccer’s most tantalizing what-ifs.
How close did Lionel Messi come to playing for Spain instead of Argentina? In an alternate reality, could Messi be taking the field at MetLife Stadium in the red shirt of “La Roja” instead of Argentina’s sky blue and white vertical stripes?
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Messi grew up in a modest home in a working-class neighborhood of Rosario, a city of nearly 2 million in Argentina’s Santa Fe province. It was on these rock-strewn lots and unpaved roads where he became obsessed with soccer, where he spent hour after hour playing against his older brothers and neighborhood friends, where he developed a knack for producing magic with the ball at his feet.
When word spread about an unusually small but exceptionally talented Argentine phenom, FC Barcelona offered to not only sign Messi but also to pay for the growth hormone treatment he needed to help his body grow and develop. At age 13, Messi packed his belongings and moved to Spain to join Barcelona’s famed youth academy.
Under Spanish law, immigrants who hail from a former Spanish or Portuguese colony can apply for citizenship after just two years of continuous legal residency instead of the usual 10 years. That put Messi on a path to potentially obtain Spanish-Argentine citizenship and to have his choice of playing for either country’s national team.
There’s no question about Messi’s preference before he left for Spain. “To play for Argentina” was what 13-year-old Messi cited as his dream when he answered a series of rapid-fire questions during a September 2000 interview with Rosario-based newspaper Diario La Capital. When asked about being selected to Argentina’s youth national teams, Messi also responded, “I would love to play for them.”
As a young star for FC Barcelona, Messi could have gained the citizenship necessary to play for Spain.
(LLUIS GENE via Getty Images)
Curiously, Messi didn’t get that opportunity for years, not even after he established himself as one of the jewels of the Barcelona developmental system.
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Messi was part of a celebrated generation at Barcelona, rising through the ranks alongside the likes of Cesc Fàbregas, Gerard Pique, Marc Valiente and Victor Vazquez. As teens, those guys each starred for Spain’s U15 and U17 teams. Meanwhile, Messi didn’t get a call-up from the coaches of Argentina’s youth national teams. Out of sight and out of mind in Barcelona, he apparently wasn’t on Argentina’s radar.
“It wasn’t normal for a player like Leo not to be on any national team,” former Barcelona youth coach Alex Garcia recently told ESPN.
So Garcia took it upon himself to notify Spain youth team coach Ginés Meléndez about Messi’s situation.
“There’s a kid here, an Argentine, but they don’t call him up,” Garcia told ESPN. “Maybe there’s a possibility he might want to play for Spain.”
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Meléndez tried to persuade Messi to play for Spain at the 2003 U17 World Cup. Boy, did he try. When ESPN asked what he was thinking when he learned a prospect the caliber of Messi could be available, a chuckling Meléndez responded, “I don’t know, kidnap him.”
At the same time that Spain was ramping up its pursuit of Messi and asking his Barcelona youth teammates to try to recruit him, Argentine national team assistant coach Claudio Vivas visited Barcelona as part of a trip to check in with some of the country’s senior players. Messi’s father took advantage of that opportunity, arranging a brief meeting with Vivas so that he could show the coach footage of his son.
The VHS highlight tape, according to Guillem Ballague’s 2013 book “Messi,” was 12 minutes long and showed the young Argentine outclassing players two years older than him. Vivas told Ballague he was so impressed that he called Argentine U17 coach Hugo Tocalli about Messi from his Barcelona hotel room and then delivered the videotape to Tocalli in person soon after he arrived home.
Lionel Messi poses during a private photo session in 2005, after he had finally made his debut for Argentina’s U20 national team.
(El Grafico via Getty Images)
“Please don’t let this opportunity slip,” Vivas allegedly told Tocalli. “If we don’t act quickly — not because of Lionel, not because of his father but rather because of the pressure being put on by Spain — we are going to lose a great player.”
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At first, Tocalli didn’t seem to grasp the urgency. He didn’t call up Messi for the U17 World Cup that was only weeks away. It wasn’t that Tocalli doubted Messi’s talent, he has since said. He just didn’t want to disrupt a settled squad and deny a player who had already been promised a roster spot.
Spain ousted Argentina in the semifinals of that U17 World Cup. Fàbregas, Messi’s Barcelona teammate, scored a pair of goals, including the game winner in the 119th minute.
Messi was a topic of conversation after the match, Argentine coach José Pékerman said during a 2025 appearance at the Olé Sports Summit in Buenos Aires.
“The Spanish players said in their handshake, ‘If you had this kid, you would have been the champions,'” Pékerman said.
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With Spain continuing to pursue Messi and the 2005 U20 World Cup still two years away, the Argentine federation at last hatched a plan to avoid losing the Barcelona phenom. Argentina hastily arranged a June 2004 U20 international friendly match against Paraguay to give the federation a reason to call up Messi, trigger FIFA eligibility rules from that time period and permanently tie him to his birth country.
In front of a sparse crowd at the Argentinos Juniors stadium, a 17-year-old Messi came on as a substitute. He split a pair of defenders and deftly dribbled around the Paraguayan goalkeeper to score the seventh goal in the 8-0 rout, cementing his future with “La Albiceleste.”
Earlier this year, during an appearance on the Miro De Atras podcast, Messi reflected on the choice he made to play for Argentina. There was a real chance for him to wear a Spain shirt, Messi confirmed, but the 39-year-old said, “My desire was always to play for Argentina.”
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Messi will do that again on Sunday, perhaps for the final time on a World Cup stage.
It’s fitting in many ways that the match is against Spain, the country that first recognized his immense potential and tried to lure him away.
