Di María, who was alongside Messi for almost the entirety of his international career, posted his message after Messi published his farewell letter on August 31.
Translated into English, the Argentina forward wrote:
“We will be grateful to you our whole lives for being Argentine, for taking Argentina to the top of the world. For having chosen to be Argentine when you could easily have chosen something else. Thank you, captain. Thank you for everything. The greatest in history.”
The middle sentence is the one that stands out. Di María thanks Messi not for the trophies but for a decision made off the pitch, decades ago: to answer for Argentina rather than Spain, where he had lived since the age of 13 and could have opted for La Roja instead.
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From “pecho frío” to lifetime gratitude
That choice was not always treated as a gift at home. After Argentina lost the 2016 Copa América Centenario final to Chile on penalties, a broken Messi announced he was retiring from the national team, only to reverse the decision weeks later after public appeals. In the years before Argentina’s revival, sections of the support labelled him “pecho frío”, Argentine slang for cold-hearted, the accusation that he did not feel the shirt the way his teammates did.
The trophies rewrote the argument. Argentina won Copa América in 2021 in Rio de Janeiro, added the Finalissima against Italy in 2022, took the World Cup in Qatar later that year, and defended Copa América in 2024. Messi finished with 207 caps and 125 goals for Argentina, both national records.
The letter Messi wrote in July
Messi’s farewell letter, posted from his Instagram account on August 31, revealed he had written the text on July 21, two days after Argentina lost the 2026 World Cup final 1-0 to Spain at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford. Ferran Torres scored in the second period of extra time to hand Spain its second world title.
“It was a decision that hurt and hurts in the soul, but I understand that this is the moment,” Messi wrote.
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“I emptied myself, I have nothing more to give, and there are very big kids coming behind who deserve to be there.”
He added that the death of his father, Jorge Messi, on August 8 had left him “more convinced than before” that the decision was the right one.
The letter closes with a line that reads almost as a mirror of Di María’s tribute: “Thank God for making me Argentine.”
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