The referee had him down as "Mecci" — double C — and the stands at the Estadio Diego Armando Maradona were half empty. That was Lionel Messi's Argentina debut, 22 years ago today, and almost nobody was watching.
"People didn't even know Argentina was playing," said Gerardo Salorio, the physical trainer for Hugo Tocalli's U-20 side. That was partly by design. The second leg of a low-key friendly pair against Paraguay, the match was deliberately quiet — because the whole point wasn't the game. It was the paperwork.
Spain was already sniffing around
Here's the part that still makes Argentine fans shudder when they think about it: Spain wanted him. With Messi set to acquire a Spanish passport through his time in the Barcelona academy, the Spanish federation began making enquiries about whether he'd represent La Roja at youth level.
"While I'm obviously Argentine, I'd gone to Barcelona very young and did a large part of my training there," Messi said this year on the Miro de Atras podcast. "There was the chance. It could've happened."
It didn't, largely because Julio Grondona — the longtime AFA president and a man who knew exactly how football's administrative machinery worked — moved fast. He organised the Paraguay friendly series specifically to get Messi into an Argentina shirt and cap-tied before anyone else could act. The player and his family were on board. The rest needed engineering.
Messi came on at half-time with Argentina level at 1-1 on aggregate. By the final whistle, they'd added four more for an 8-0 win, with the 17-year-old already setting up goals from a free kick and open play. The commentator on the broadcast, moments after Messi entered, described him simply as "unknown." Born in Rosario, playing in the Barcelona system since age 12. That was the full biography available.
What followed moved fast
Six months later, Messi scored five goals at the 2005 South American U-20 Championship. A year after the Paraguay debut, he scored six at the FIFA World Youth Championship as Argentina won the title. The trajectory from "Mecci" to global icon took roughly 18 months to become obvious to everyone outside the game — and was already obvious to those inside it.
Now, at the 2026 World Cup, Messi leads the golden boot race with six goals from three games as Argentina have won all three group stage matches. The AFA's training headquarters in Buenos Aires bears his name. Two Copa América titles. A World Cup. A career that reshaped what Argentine football means to Argentines.
Grondona got his man. Spain never got their call returned. And Gabriel Brazenas, the referee who recorded the name wrong on that June evening in 2004, has had 22 years to correct the spelling.
"Without a doubt," Salorio said, "there's a before and after in the history of football."
