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Lionel Messi is gone, Argentina need a new No.10: The tactical race to inherit football's most important shirt
Messi's retirement leaves Argentina with an impossible No.10 succession call. Who stands out in the race?
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Some footballers leave behind an empty position. Lionel Messi has left Argentina with an empty language. For more than two decades, the No.10 shirt did not merely identify the player operating behind the forwards. It meant the first pass after possession was recovered, the pause before an attack accelerated, the ball threaded through a defensive line and, often enough, the finish at the end of it. Argentina gradually constructed an entire footballing ecosystem around one extraordinary left foot. Now, with Messi having brought his international career to an end after one final World Cup campaign, Argentina face a problem no tactical diagram can solve simply by replacing one name with another.
There will inevitably be an appetite to identify the next No.10. Argentina, perhaps more than any football nation, attaches cultural weight to the number. Diego Maradona carried it before Messi; Juan Riquelme briefly occupied the creative space between their eras. Yet the most important decision Scaloni makes will not concern the number printed on a shirt. It will concern which player is entrusted with becoming the principal creative reference of Argentina's next cycle.
Argentina must replace a function, not a footballer
Searching for another Messi would be an act of tactical nostalgia. Argentina instead have to identify which of their young creators possesses the combination of spatial intelligence, ball progression, final-third production and positional flexibility required to become the centre of a new attack.
There are several candidates. None is an exact successor. Thiago Almada perhaps presents the strongest immediate case. He already understands international football, has been integrated into Scaloni's system for years and possesses the technical security required to receive possession in congested areas. Almada can operate centrally or begin from the left before moving inside, combines quickly around the penalty area and is comfortable assuming responsibility against compact defences.
Yet his versatility is also an argument against making him the fixed creative axis of Argentina. Almada is most dangerous when allowed to move towards spaces rather than when the structure obliges every possession to pass through him. In a post-Messi Argentina, that mobility may be invaluable alongside the principal creator rather than as a replacement for him.
Mastantuono is the romantic choice, not yet the logical one
Franco Mastantuono offers a more romantic possibility. The ingredients invite the comparison almost automatically: an Argentine left-footer, developed by River Plate, comfortable beginning from the right and travelling infield, gifted enough to manipulate the ball in restricted spaces. He has already been trusted with Argentina's No.10 shirt when Messi was absent.
But aesthetics are not evidence. Mastantuono remains a footballer in development. His senior club career has not yet provided the sustained volume of elite-level performances necessary to place an international attack on his shoulders. His ceiling may eventually be enormous, possibly greater than that of anybody else in this conversation, but Argentina cannot build the beginning of the next four-year cycle around what a teenager might become.
Alexis Mac Allister presents another temptation. He possesses the intelligence and technique to play higher and already wears No.10 at the club level. Moving him closer to goal, however, would diminish one of Argentina's greatest existing advantages. Mac Allister's ability to receive under pressure, escape the first line, and connect the midfield with the attack makes him considerably more valuable as an eight. Together with Enzo Fernández, he should construct Argentina's platform rather than become its final creative destination.
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The best-suited option for Argentina
Once the problem is defined in those terms, one candidate begins to separate himself. Nico Paz. Not because Argentina require another fashionable left-footed prodigy. Not because the lineage of an Argentine No.10 demands one. And certainly not because anybody should spend the next decade attempting to reproduce Messi.
Paz's case is compelling because his football increasingly fits the job Argentina actually need filled. At Como, he has developed from an intriguing attacking midfielder into a player capable of determining matches. His 2025-26 Serie A season produced 12 goals and seven assists and earned him the league's Best Midfielder award. More significantly, the underlying shape of those performances suggests a creator whose influence extends beyond the final pass. Paz ranked among the league's most aggressive midfield shooters while also contributing substantially without possession.
Argentina could accommodate Messi's minimal defensive responsibility because Messi's attacking output justified redesigning the team around him. Replicating that arrangement for a lesser player would be absurd. Their next creator must contribute within Scaloni's collective structure rather than exist outside it. Paz can.
He is comfortable receiving between midfield and defence, but he does not need to remain there. He can drop towards the central midfielders to advance possession, drift into the right half-space, operate behind a centre-forward or arrive around the penalty area as a scorer. Como have even used him higher as a false nine. The significance is not that Paz can occupy several positions; modern football is full of nominally versatile players. It is that his fundamental behaviour survives those positional changes. He continues looking for pockets from which he can turn and advance the attack.
This is where Argentina's succession plan becomes considerably more interesting than simply handing somebody Messi's shirt. Julián Álvarez can absorb a greater share of the goals and become the attacking reference. Mac Allister and Enzo can control progression from deeper areas. Almada can supply movement around the principal creator. Paz can occupy the space connecting those elements. In other words, Argentina do not need Paz to inherit everything Messi did. They need him to inherit the part around which the others can be reorganised.
That should also determine the future of the shirt. The No.10 cannot remain permanently preserved as an artefact of Messi's era. Nor should it be awarded merely to the most senior attacker available. Eventually, somebody has to wear it without pretending that doing so makes him responsible for recreating the greatest player Argentina (maybe football has) ever produced.
Among the current generation, Paz has the strongest combination of age, production, tactical suitability and developmental runway to make that transition his own. Messi's No.10 will never become an ordinary shirt again. That is precisely why Argentina must resist searching for another Messi to put inside it. Give it to Nico Paz, and allow the number to begin telling a different story.
