Dybala Is 'Clear Choice' for Argentina's No. 10 After Messi

With Lionel Messi gone from international football, the debate over Argentina's most famous shirt has exploded. A new opinion piece in Back Page Football says there is one obvious answer: Paulo Dybala.

The debate explodes

Lionel Messi's farewell from international football — a 3-0 win over Benin at the Monumental on 6 October 2026 — has left Argentina with one unavoidable question: who inherits the most famous shirt in world football?

Back Page Football columnist Daryl Constantine has now published the most forceful answer yet. In a piece published on 20 October, he argues that Paulo Dybala is the 'clear and correct choice' to take over the No. 10 on a permanent basis — ahead of any of Argentina's emerging young talents, including Nico Paz.

The piece reframes Dybala's entire international career as a story of a generational talent eclipsed by Messi's extraordinary longevity, and argues the moment to right that story is now.

The shirt nobody wants to assign

The jersey's status is genuinely unresolved. Messi wore Argentina's No. 10 since 2009, across 207 caps and 125 goals, and the Argentine FA wanted to retire it as a tribute after his international retirement, announced on 31 August.

FIFA blocked that plan. According to Goal, football's governing body requires final-tournament squads to use numbers 1 to 26, so Argentina cannot permanently retire the number — though it can leave it vacant in friendlies. Argentina previously faced the same situation that Liberia did with George Weah's No. 14.

Coach Lionel Scaloni has been cautious. 'We are not obliged to assign it for the upcoming matches, so we will give it to no one until after Leo's farewell match. We just have not yet decided who,' he said, according to Goal. Before the Bolivia friendly in September, he confirmed no player would wear it for now.

Dybala has done it before

Central to Constantine's case is precedent: Dybala has already worn the shirt for Scaloni — and scored in it. In September 2024, with Messi out injured, the Roma man was entrusted with the No. 10 for the World Cup qualifier against Chile, a 3-0 win in which he struck Argentina's third goal with an assist from Alejandro Garnacho.

Dybala's humility that night stuck with people. 'I know it's not my shirt, we all know it's Leo's shirt but well, I tried to represent it in the best way... It was a decision made by the coaching staff, some of the boys said that it had to be me... I didn't know whether to accept it or not,' he told TyC Sports.

The coaching staff's reasoning, as Scaloni explained afterward, was simple: Dybala had the quality to carry the weight. His teammates agreed. That is, Constantine argues, a meaningful precedent for handing it to him permanently.

The 2022 final cameo

The column also revisits Dybala's fascinating role in the 2022 World Cup final. Barely used all tournament after fighting back from an October 2022 injury, he came on in extra time against France, made a critical defensive clearance to deny Kylian Mbappe, then converted Argentina's second penalty — almost straight down the middle, on Emiliano Martinez's advice — after Martinez had saved from Kingsley Coman.

It was the go-ahead kick of the shootout. Constantine's point is stark: had that kick been missed, Messi's legacy conversation might look very different. Dybala, the man Messi kept out of the team for a decade, helped secure the captain's crowning moment.

Who else is in the race

Dybala is far from the only name in the frame. World Soccer Talk compiled the recent history of the shirt when Messi was unavailable: Franco Mastantuono wore it most recently, in the September 2025 qualifier defeat to Ecuador; Angel Correa wore it in March 2025; Dybala in September 2024; Sergio Aguero in October 2016.

ESPN Argentina reporter Federico Bueno, however, says Nico Paz is the leading candidate to inherit it if Scaloni stays on — and Paz did take on playmaking duties for the post-Messi experiment against Bolivia in September. Constantine explicitly rejects handing the shirt to the next generation immediately, arguing experience matters more in the transition.

The case for, and against

The footballing logic of the Dybala case is striking. For years, the argument against picking Dybala regularly was that he occupied the same spaces as Messi — between the lines, ball in tight areas, creating with his left foot. With Messi gone, Constantine writes, those qualities now make him a 'plug-and-play' fit for a system Argentina spent years building around Messi's movement.

He is also, the piece argues, a character fit: loyal to club and country (rejecting a Saudi move to stay at Roma), classy under pressure, never publicly agitating about his role. It even floats him as a future captain.

The honest counterpoints: Dybala is 32, his fitness record is patchy — an issue that cost him the 2024 Copa America squad — and Argentina will eventually need a longer-term heir. Constantine concedes all of that, and argues simply that the immediate transition needs a bridge, not a teenager.

What happens next

Argentina's November fixtures will be the first true tests of the post-Messi era: Uruguay on 13 November in Buenos Aires, then Costa Rica on 17 November in Cordoba. Whether Scaloni assigns the No. 10 for either match remains an open question.

FIFA's ruling means the decision cannot be postponed forever — the number must be worn at major tournaments. But for friendlies, the vacancy can continue. The debate, at least, is settled on one front: nobody in the camp pretends filling Messi's shirt will be easy. As Constantine puts it, there is no requirement that the next No. 10 must be a teenager — and in Dybala, Argentina has a world-class footballer who has waited his entire career for this exact moment.

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