They came out without a word.

Backpacks on shoulders, kit bags in hand, silver medals already packed away.

Argentine outlets that filmed the corridor outside the away dressing room at MetLife Stadium described a squad “practically without words and broken inside” as they walked one by one toward the team bus after the 1-0 defeat to Spain in the World Cup final.

Lionel Messi led the group out. He briefly raised a hand toward the waiting cameras, said nothing, and kept walking. The technical staff followed the same choreography of silence.

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Inside the room they had just left, the mood was little different. “The captain spoke, I talked with some. There was little to say, honestly the sadness was great,” Lionel Scaloni told Argentine media.

Messi’s short address to his teammates, according to the same account, focused on pride and gratitude for a squad that had spent more than 50 days away from their families.

Messi and Yamal on the pitch

Before the walk to the bus, Lamine Yamal crossed the pitch to find Messi, who had sat down on the turf after the final whistle. The two embraced and exchanged a few words.

“He told me to keep going my way and that the future belongs to our generation,” Yamal told ESPN.

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“Those words mean as much to me as the gold medal around my neck.”

Messi was in tears when he collected his runner-up medal. Asked how he felt, he answered:

“I feel sad. They were better, to be honest.”

Yamal on the mic at Cibeles

The following day in Madrid, Spain’s open-top bus rolled through packed streets to Cibeles Square.

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Yamal grabbed the microphone on the top deck and sang Bad Bunny as the players danced behind him. Ferran Torres, whose 106th-minute goal off the bench had won the trophy, wore a red cap reading “Make Spain Great Again”.

At Cibeles, captain Rodri singled Torres out from the stage.

“I would like to remember a very important person to me, a player who has been unfairly criticized and who today is part of Spanish football history: Ferran,” he told the crowd.

The Argentine delegation, meanwhile, was already gone. Messi travelled to Rosario in the days after the final before returning to Inter Miami.

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Nicolás Otamendi announced his retirement from the national team after 17 years. Goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez said only that he needed to “see if it’s time to step aside”.

Scaloni was similarly brief on his own future:

“We’ll continue fighting until December.”

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