Scaloni spreads Messi's old authority across three new captains
With Lionel Messi retiring from international duty on October 6, Lionel Scaloni has split the responsibility he once carried alone between Cristian Romero, Emiliano Martinez and Lautaro Martinez.
Lionel Scaloni has confirmed that Cristian Romero will take over as Argentina captain once Lionel Messi retires from international football, with Emiliano Martinez and Lautaro Martinez named as his deputies, according to Football Italia.
Messi, 39, plays his farewell match against Benin at the Estadio Monumental on October 6, closing a international career that delivered the 2022 World Cup, the 2026 final and two Copa America titles, Football Italia reports.
Scaloni set out the new pecking order this week. "The armband will go to Cuti Romero, who was next in the pecking order after Leo and Otamendi," he said, as relayed by Football Italia via Gianluca Di Marzio. He added separately: "The vice-captain will be Emiliano Martinez, followed by Lautaro Martinez as third choice."
The announcement also confirms that Nicolas Otamendi, long one of the squad's vice-captains, has stepped away from international duty alongside Messi, removing a second senior voice from the dressing room at the same time.
Lautaro Martinez's inclusion is not a surprise on its own terms. He has 40 goals in 84 caps since his 2018 debut and has captained Inter since Samir Handanovic's retirement in 2023, Football Italia notes. What matters here is where he sits in the order, and what that order says about how Scaloni wants to rebuild leadership without one dominant figure at its centre.
Why no single player can replace Messi's function
Jonathan Wilson, writing for the Guardian, frames the departure not as a simple changing of the captaincy but as the loss of what he describes as the most effective get-out-of-jail-free card the game has produced. His point is that Messi's value to Argentina was never only technical; it was the certainty, in moments when a match was going wrong, that one player could still resolve it alone.
Wilson also traces how the public relationship with Messi shifted. He recalls a first decade in which Messi was seen, unfairly in his view, as somehow not sufficiently Argentinian, a reading he attributes to the frustration of a trophy drought that continued despite Messi's presence in the side.
Put those two readings together and the challenge facing Scaloni is clearer than the captaincy announcement alone suggests. Argentina are not just naming a new armband-holder. They are trying to replicate, through structure rather than through one individual, something that previously needed no structure at all because Messi simply carried it.
A captaincy split across three different jobs
The chosen hierarchy reads less like a simple seniority list and more like a deliberate division of labour. Romero, a centre-back, is the on-field organiser closest to the goal Argentina are defending, the natural voice for a backline under pressure. Emiliano Martinez, as goalkeeper, already commands the box and the defensive unit in a way that has nothing to do with a starting shirt in attack. Lautaro Martinez, as the senior striker and Inter's own captain, inherits the forward-line responsibility that Messi held by default for over a decade.
That arrangement spreads across the pitch the kind of authority Messi exercised almost everywhere at once, from deep buildup to the final third. It is a practical solution rather than a replacement, and it implicitly accepts Wilson's argument that no single successor can do what Messi did.
The timing adds weight to the decision. Losing both Messi and Otamendi from the leadership group in the same window leaves Scaloni needing more voices, not fewer, inside a squad that has just finished winning consecutive major tournaments under one captain's shadow.
What comes next for Argentina
The practical test of this new structure begins immediately. Argentina still have fixtures to play before Messi's send-off against Benin on October 6, the match in which Scaloni's rebuilt leadership group will formally take a public bow alongside the player they are succeeding.
Beyond that fixture, the real examination starts once Messi is no longer available at all: whether Romero, Emiliano Martinez and Lautaro Martinez, operating as a three-part leadership unit rather than deferring to one superstar, can hold the dressing room together when a match stops going to plan.