Lionel Scaloni was 26 years old when Lionel Messi made his international debut for Argentina. Considered a generational talent, Messi’s debut game turned out to be an underwhelming one. The modern day great was sent off 45 seconds after coming on, for elbowing Hungarian defender Vilmos Vanczak.
The two players with the same first name – derivative of the Greek word Leon (Lion) – took two very different routes in their career. Scaloni, who played in England and Spain, before retiring in Italy, is perhaps best known for spilling the ball in West Ham’s FA Cup final against Liverpool.
Minnows West Ham were leading 3-2 against Liverpool in the 90th minute, well on course of their first FA Cup title in 26 years. However, their fate changed when Scaloni, playing as the right-back in the West Ham team, spilled the ball in added time. The spill resulted in a screamer from Steven Gerrard, pushing the match into Extra Time, and then penalties.
Broken in spirit after letting go of a sure shot win in 90 minutes, West Ham missed 3 in the shootout, eventually losing to Liverpool. Scaloni’s contract (on loan from Deportivo) at West Ham was not renewed.
It’s a shame, recalled former West Ham manager Alan Pardew, who hails Scaloni as one of the most reliable players he has ever worked with.
“Unfortunately, it was the one time I did not see Scaloni be efficient and calm. I honestly cannot remember him making a mistake before then, but it proved to be a costly one,” Pardew said in one of his columns years later.
MEANWHILE, THE OTHER LIONEL
The other Lionel, as everybody knows, went onto become one of the greats of the game. But his career hit the wall in 2018, when Argentina were knocked out of the Round of 16 of the FIFA World Cup.
Messi came into that year’s FIFA World Cup with the stigma of a ‘national team failure’. Ronaldo had already won a trophy – Euro 2016, while a torn Messi, after multiple heartbreaks had called it a day after losing the Copa America final in the same year.
Such is the weight of the Argentina shirt, such is the weight of the legacy left by one of the greatests of all time – Diego Armando Maradona.
“It is hard, my son is always looking on YouTube and saw a video. He asked me why in Argentina they want to kill me!” Messi had opened up later about how the stress of the Argentina shirt got to him.
That voluntary exit did not last long. Messi made a U-turn months after and entered the 2018 World Cup in peak form. One hoped that Messi would complete his unfinished business and win the competition.
But, fate is cruel.
Jorge Sampaoli’s team had absolutely no cohesion. Messi, Angel Di Maria, Javier Mascherano were cogs of a wheel so broken that nobody knew what exactly their roles were in the team.
Argentina were knocked out by France in the Round of 16, and Messi disappeared again. Many believed at the time that Messi was done with the national team. Done with his own failures.
Lionel Scaloni was 40 at the time. Watching all of it unfold in front of his eyes as the assistant coach of that Argentine team.
LIONEL SCALONI: THE ACCIDENTAL MANAGER
The 2018 failure predictably saw Argentina coach Sampaoli sacked from the job. But who would take over? Certainly not Scaloni, still 40 years young, and without any credible experience. The football federation had contacted two heavyweight Argentines for the position – Mauricio Pochettino and Diego Simeone. Both denied the poisoned chalice.
With absolutely no choice, the AFA handed the role to the 40-year-old.
The task was cut out for Scaloni. The first one, and perhaps the most important one, was to convince Lionel Messi to come back. To make him fall in love with international football once again.
Scaloni took a personal route. One of his assistants was Pablo Aimar, Messi’s childhood idol. Along with Aimar and Walter Samuel, another trusted former international, Scaloni reached out to Messi and presented a vision of a younger, hungrier Argentina with him still at its centre.
The message worked. Messi returned.
It took time for the national team to click. Scaloni knew that he had the greatest of this generation in his hand, but how could he unlock him? Something that Maradona, Tata Martino, and his predecessor Sampaoli had failed to do.
SCALONI RE-ENGINEERS ARGENTINA
After an initial series of games, Scaloni figured out what had been bugging Argentina. He realised that the pace of football needed to be different. Instead of using Messi’s ballistic bursts to attack at pace, he had to slow him down, ask him to scan the pitch more, rather than taking control of the ball and dribbling through a team.
The move clicked.
Lionel Messi became the heartbeat of a team that was willing to run around him and protect him at all costs.
Interpersonal relationships were key in building such trust.
Alongside Aimar and Samuel, he created an environment where players genuinely enjoyed representing Argentina again. The coaching staff believed togetherness mattered as much as formations. Long conversations, shared meals and dressing-room unity became as important as tactical meetings.
Rodrigo De Paul would later sum up the philosophy best: “Making the person better to make the game better.”
It reached its defining moment in Rio de Janeiro in 2021, just one year before the FIFA World Cup 2022.
Ahead of the Copa America final against Neymar’s Brazil, an otherwise shy Lionel Messi gave a fiery dressing room speech to the rest of the team.
“For 45 days, there were no complaints about the food, the hotels, the pitches. Nothing, boys. Forty-five days without seeing our families. Forty-five days! Dibu became a father and couldn’t see his daughter. He couldn’t hold her. And all this for what? For this. For this moment.”
Argentina won that game. Lionel Messi’s first international title after failing in four separate competitions.
Things changed after that night. The burden disappeared. The fear disappeared. Argentina no longer looked like a team hoping Messi would save them. Instead, they became a team determined to win it for him.
That day a juggernaut was born. Since that 2021 win, Argentina won the FIFA World Cup and Finalissma in 2022, and the Copa America in 2024, clinching every single competition they played in.
ARGENTINA’S WARDEN
In between the trophies, Scaloni stressed on interpersonal relationships time and again. He often resisted discussions about formations, insisting football was about feelings as much as systems. That belief carried Argentina through the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where they recovered from a shocking opening defeat to Saudi Arabia before lifting the trophy after one of the greatest finals in football history.
Scaloni, after their loss in the opener, had famously said, ‘Don’t worry. The sun will rise again.’
Scaloni’s coaching style is based on a simple method. That perhaps, it is more important to put an arm around a shoulder in a long tournament, than to just blurt out tactical nuances at players who are already hurting.
Perhaps he felt that he needed the same at West Ham, when his first mistake of the season saw their title dream crashing down.
Perhaps he felt the same for Lionel Messi, in 2005 and in 2018, when he walked off the pitch with his head down in two very different circumstances.
The Argentines are now in the final once again. If they win on Sunday, they will only become the third team to defend their FIFA World Cup trophy. But regardless of the result, Lionel Scaloni will remain the first, and the only coach, to unlock the full potential of Lionel Messi.
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