Fifteen hours after his plane landed back in Florida from his father’s funeral in Argentina, Lionel Messi stood at Nu Stadium in Miami, his hands on his hips, the crowd on their feet.Earlier that day, August 12, Messi posted a message on Instagram that reflected how unmooring grief can be.“All I ever did was play football,” he wrote. “And now I have serious doubts about whether I’ll keep doing it for much longer.”For years, the prospect of life without football had manifested its own fears and anxieties within the great Argentinian No. 10. A few years earlier, ahead of the 2024 Copa América, Messi said in an interview with ESPN Argentina that he was “a bit scared of it all ending”. But with the 2026 World Cup now over, the finish line felt closer than ever. His father’s passing undoubtedly only higlighted how life and time continues unchecked, even if you are not ready for it.With those realities swirling in his head, Messi found solace where he always had: on the football pitch. Only this time, as he prepared to enter Inter Miami’s Leagues Cup game against León as a substitute, he looked out at the field and saw his own name lit up on the concourse in front of him: Leo Messi Stand.It was a sign of how much more he still had awaiting him when he does step away.The field he would jog onto in Miami was one he owned — not as he had controlled so many pitches before with his extraterrestrial abilities, but as part-owner of Inter Miami. The key clause of the contract with the Major League Soccer team that lured him stateside in 2023 gave Messi a minority percentage in the club when he retired. Around 10 percent was linked in his first contract, and an undisclosed further amount baked into the extension he signed in 2025.A few weeks after that Leagues Cup return, and two days after scoring four goals in an Inter Miami win, Messi announced he was retiring from Argentina’s national team. It meant that his final days on the field will almost certainly come in Miami. How long he lasts remains to be seen. He is contracted through the end of the 2027-28 season, but really, the exact date matters less.Lionel Messi has been an Inter Miami player since 2023 (Chandan Khanna / AFP / Getty Images)The inevitability of the end — the prospect of football without Messi — felt omnipresent since he first arrived in the United States. Messi pondered how he might fill the hole that the sport filled for as long as he could remember in his life.“I know these are my last years, and I know that when I don’t have this, I’m going to miss it dearly,” Messi said in the Apple TV documentary Messi Meets America. “Because no matter how many things I find to do, nothing is going to be like this, which I did all my life.”