Argentina will not be able to permanently retire the No. 10 shirt in honour of Lionel Messi, as FIFA squad regulations stand in the way of the tribute, according to a report by GOAL.com.
The Argentine Football Association had wanted to take the number out of circulation for good once Messi stepped away from the national team. The 39 year old announced on 31 August that he was retiring from international football after more than two decades with the Albiceleste.
Messi is expected to make his farewell appearance before the home crowd on 6 October, when Argentina face Benin in a friendly at the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires. He ends his international career with 207 caps and 125 goals, and wore the No. 10 through most of that run after inheriting it in 2009.
The obstacle lies in FIFA’s tournament rules, which require teams at international final competitions to assign squad numbers in a continuous run. At the 2026 World Cup, each 26 man squad had to be numbered from 1 to 26, leaving no room to hold a single number back as a permanent memorial. That means the No. 10 will have to be issued again whenever Argentina appear at future World Cups or the Copa America.
The AFA has run into the rule before. The number was left out of Argentina’s recent friendly win over Bolivia, and the same regulation applied during the 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign, when a complete squad required every consecutive number to be filled.
Argentina are not alone in testing the limits of the policy. Liberia retired the No. 14 shirt in tribute to the former striker and president George Weah, only for FIFA guidelines to force the number back into use during World Cup qualifying.
For now, the shirt sits vacant. Head coach Lionel Scaloni has indicated he is in no hurry to reassign it, at least until the send off is over. “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,” Scaloni told ESPN.
A likely successor has already been identified internally, though. ESPN Argentina reporter Federico Bueno named Nico Paz as the frontrunner to take on the shirt, subject to Scaloni’s own future. “If Scaloni extends his contract as Argentina head coach, then Nico Paz will be the new number 10. That has been decided internally,” Bueno said.
Paz, 22, is an attacking midfielder who came through Real Madrid before joining Italian club Como on a permanent deal reported at 60 million euros last summer. He has made 11 appearances for Argentina and scored once, and would carry considerable weight if handed a number that has passed from Diego Maradona to Messi.
What remains unsettled is both the identity of the next holder and the timing of the decision, with Scaloni’s contract position still open. Until Argentina name their squad for a future tournament, the question of who wears Messi’s No. 10 stays unanswered, even as the rule guarantees that someone eventually will.