Demichelis: 'He will be missed' as Messi leaves Argentina

Martín Demichelis could not be at the Monumental on October 6, but the former Argentina defender felt every moment of Lionel Messi's farewell from Germany. He has now revealed the message he sent his old captain after the World Cup semi-final win over England.

Nostalgia from Germany, not Buenos Aires

When Lionel Messi walked off the Estadio Monumental pitch for the last time in an Argentina shirt on October 6, one of his old teammates was watching from nearly 11,000 kilometres away. Martín Demichelis, now the head coach of RB Leipzig, had coaching commitments in Germany and could not travel to Buenos Aires for the farewell match.

Instead, he lived it the way so many others did: through the videos that kept surfacing on social media. And, as he admitted in an interview reported by Goal, the emotion hit him just as hard.

"When he announced his retirement and the day came, like every Argentine, I felt overcome by nostalgia," Demichelis said. "Well, I started watching videos, moments that were emerging on social media... I couldn't be there because of work. In part I'm grateful for that, because it means I have a job at a great institution. But as an Argentine, as a former team-mate, nostalgia overcame me."

It is a measure of what Messi's exit has meant back home that even a man with a Champions League assignment to prepare could not switch off from it. Demichelis was due at a pre-match press conference, but the farewell was clearly the story he carried with him into it.

The wedding guest who never texted

Demichelis and Messi go back a long way. They were teammates with Argentina through the 2010 and 2014 World Cup cycles, sharing dressing rooms at three major tournaments. Their bond extended beyond football: when Messi got married, Demichelis was one of the guests.

Yet in all those years, he says he almost never wrote to him. "I never liked bothering Leo through messages, because I imagine he must have millions every day," he explained. Like everyone else in Messi's orbit, he understood that the captain's attention was the most contested currency in football.

He broke that rule exactly once. After Argentina's World Cup semi-final victory over England, with the country dreaming of another final, Demichelis felt he could stay silent no longer.

"After the semi-final I wrote to him because I felt a need to congratulate him after the match against England, where once again he showed, in a very special way, how to bring out that gut feeling as a team and as captain," he said.

What he wrote next suggests he already sensed the end was near: "That conviction of his, his gaze, his desire and above all his age... Wow! I felt the need to congratulate him, to ask him, for one last time, to enjoy it, regardless of what came afterwards."

'He will be missed'

Demichelis did not stop at personal reminiscence. He also offered the most generous possible verdict on what Messi leaves behind — not just for Argentina, but for the sport itself.

"He will be missed. He left a very great legacy in the world of sport, in our football history as well. And well, I'm grateful to have been his contemporary," he said.

Goal reports that Messi concluded his international career with 126 goals and 70 assists in 208 caps — numbers that make him Argentina's record scorer and the nation's most decorated international of all time. The farewell itself could hardly have been more fitting: a goal and two assists in the 3-0 win over Benin, with his three sons walking beside him onto the pitch.

For Demichelis, who won 51 caps for the Albiceleste and lived through the near-misses of 2014 and 2015, there is an added poignancy. He was there for the suffering; he has now watched, from a distance, the glory that completed the story.

The new era begins without him

Argentina must now move on, and the transition is already underway. November's friendlies against Uruguay and Costa Rica will be the first without their long-serving talisman, and the squad is adjusting to a reality that felt unthinkable for twenty years.

Demichelis's words capture why that adjustment is emotional rather than merely tactical. Messi was not just the team's best player; he was the through-line connecting four World Cup cycles, the figure every Argentina squad was built around and built up by.

The former defender's own career illustrates the point. From River Plate to Bayern Munich to Manchester City, his résumé is glittering — yet the chapters he wanted to talk about were the ones spent standing beside Messi.

From the Monumental to the Bernabéu

Having paid his tribute, Demichelis must now turn his full attention to one of European football's most daunting assignments: leading RB Leipzig out at the Santiago Bernabéu to face Real Madrid in the Champions League this week.

His Leipzig project is still young — he took charge in the summer of 2026 and opened his Bundesliga account with a 3-0 victory over Borussia Mönchengladbach, a debut he said he would "never forget". The trip to Madrid represents a step up in class, and Demichelis knows it.

Still, it is striking that even in the middle of such a week, he made room for the farewell. Champions League nights come around every season; watching your former captain say goodbye to your country happens once. The nostalgia, as he put it, overcame him — and he clearly wanted the record to show how he felt.

A chorus that keeps growing

Demichelis is far from the first former teammate to pay tribute. Ronaldinho sent his "enjoy life" message on X, Tata Martino grouped Messi with Maradona as the finest football has ever produced, and fans in both Buenos Aires and Cotonou begged him not to go during the Benin farewell itself.

But there is something particularly resonant about Demichelis's contribution. He was not a Galáctico admirer from afar, nor a Barcelona romantic — he was a defender who stood behind Messi through the hardest years, who got the wedding invitation, and who chose his one message carefully.

"For one last time, to enjoy it, regardless of what came afterwards." That was the message then. Now the afterwards has arrived, and the tributes are still coming — from Leipzig, from Buenos Aires, and from everywhere Messi's twenty years in the Albiceleste shirt touched.

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