‘The game remains untainted’: A look back on Argentine football legends’ farewells

As Argentine football legend Lionel Messi gets ever closer to his farewell from the national team, a generation of fans will have to come to terms with the loss of a man who was ubiquitous for nearly 20 years. 

For the older fans, however, the sensation is bound to feel all too similar. Less than 25 years ago, Diego Maradona, the man who made the Argentine No. 10 his own before Messi, bid farewell not just to the national team, but football as a whole.

With the Rosario-born star’s bow out set to be one of the biggest events of the year, we decided to take a look back at the last time Argentina football bid farewell to its greatest star, as well as other historic sendoffs.

Not a farewell Messi’s farewell will come as most things did in his career: clean, sharp and orderly. The Rosario-born star made a habit of perfection. Maradona’s was anything but that.

At 41, El Diez wasn’t that much older than Messi will be when he dons the Albiceste for the final time on Tuesday. However, the chaotic years of Maradona’s career made sure that his farewell wasn’t a smooth sail into the horizon. 

After a suspension for his doping case at the 1994 World Cup, Maradona returned to Boca Juniors in 1995, to middling performance and an ongoing feud with club president Mauricio Macri. Days away from turning 37, he hung up his boots after a Superclásico game against River, in which he played only the first half.

Surviving near death in 2000 with an overdose-induced heart failure, and after a rehabilitation process in Cuba, the farewell game was announced for November 20, 2001. Except it couldn’t be called a farewell, with Maradona’s team insisting on it being a “tribute match.”

‘The game remains untainted’ The game, hosted at Boca’s La Bombonera Stadium, featured Maradona for an Argentina team with many of the era’s stars, such as Pablo Aimar, Javier Zanetti and Juan Sebastián Verón, going up against a team of stars from across the world. 

In front of them was a team featuring some of the biggest names in football, including Germany’s Lothar Matthäus, Colombia’s Carlos Valderrama, Bulgaria’s Hristo Stoichkov and France’s Eric Cantona. Ironically, the man who took over from Maradona as Boca Juniors’ No.10, Juan Román Riquelme, played for the Rest of the World team, as he wasn’t a regular for then Argentina head coach Marcelo Bielsa.

The match had it all, from Colombian goalkeeper René Higuita saving a long-range shot from Maradona with his iconic airborne scorpion kick save, to Argentine rock legend Charly García getting lost at La Bombonera and accidentally going out to the pitch to the fans’ clamor, and Brazilian legend Pelé waving to the crowd from an executive box and getting booed.

After the match, Maradona took the stage to deliver what has become one of the most unforgettable speeches in Argentine sports history, taking off his Argentina shirt to reveal a Boca kit bearing Riquelme’s name and number.

“Football is the most beautiful, most pure sport in the world. Let there be no doubt about that,” he said. “Just because someone makes a mistake doesn’t mean football should pay the price. I made a mistake and paid for it, but the game remains untainted.”

International stars and a gifted goalpost Maradona wasn’t the only footballing star that got a historic sendoff. While none ever reached quite the proportions of El Diez’s tribute match, recent times have brought plenty of teary-eyed moments.

The first to do it was arguably River Plate legend Norberto Alonso. On June 13, 1987, the inspiration behind the Millonario’s 1986 Copa Libertadores and Intercontinental Cup double stepped into the Monumental for one last time, in front of an 80,000 crowd.

“It was the first and only match where my legs were shaking,” he said years after the game. “Seeing the stadium packed when I came out of the tunnel was something breathtaking.”

On February 4, 2012, La Bombonera bid farewell to one of Boca’s biggest stars: Martín Palermo. The top goalscorer in Boca’s history, with 236 goals in 404 matches, helping secure 13 titles, including two Copa Libertadores and one Intercontinental Cup.

However, perhaps the most emotional tribute occurred eight months earlier, on June 12, 2011. After his last official game with the Xeneize, the striker was brought to tears as the Boca fans chanted their historic tribute song “Thank you Palermo, thank you, Palermo.” 

That day, the club administration presented the former striker with one of the stadium’s goalposts as a gift, which now sits at a club he owns in his native La Plata.

The last great tribute to an Argentine football legend came on June 25, 2023, with the long-awaited farewell for Juan Román Riquelme. 

With Messi himself on the pitch and a plethora of Boca Juniors legends, Riquelme — who had retired ten years prior — waved farewell to a packed La Bombonera, where he repaid the gesture Maradona had with him over 20 years before, taking off his shirt to put one with El Diez’s name on the back.