Before Lionel Messi’s Last Match for Argentina, His Teammates Lit Two Grills

On Sunday night, in the grill house at the complex where Argentina’s national soccer team lives between matches, two grills were already full of glowing coals. Empanadas came out first. Then the cook started laying down the beef.

The guest of honor had arrived that afternoon. Lionel Messi, 39, the national team’s captain and record scorer, was back at the Argentine Football Association’s complex in Ezeiza, outside Buenos Aires, for the last national team camp of his life.

Messi announced his retirement from international soccer on August 31. The federation called him in one more time for a farewell match against Benin, set for Tuesday, October 6, at the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires. Before any of that, his teammates had a plan for him, and goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez had already said it out loud.

“We’ll make an asado at our base camp with him,” Martínez said after Saturday’s win over Burkina Faso, according to Sports Illustrated, “and we’ll try to cuddle him for the little time he has left.”

An asado is Argentina’s barbecue: beef, sausages and offal cooked slowly over wood embers, eaten at one long table. For this team it is also a ritual. It comes with a cook who has run the fire for 27 years and has known Messi since he was a teenager, and with a history of beef shipped across oceans. The goodbye began at the grill because that is where this team has always gathered.

What was on the two grills

Messi’s final Sunday in camp looked like work before it looked like a party. He joined training at 5:30 p.m. under coach Lionel Scaloni, the Córdoba outlet El Doce reported. La Gaceta, a daily newspaper in Tucumán, described 40 minutes in the gym, a practice match and more drills.

Then the squad walked to the quincho, the covered grill house that is a fixture of Argentine homes and clubs. Martínez, known across Argentina as Dibu, filmed the scene for Instagram and captioned it in Spanish: “To say goodbye to Leo the way it should be done.”

In the video he asks the cook what is on the fire. The answer, as La Capital of Rosario transcribed it, is a full Argentine order: chicken, ribeye, pork matambre, sweetbreads, chorizo and morcilla, the blood sausage that opens most asados. La Gaceta added vacío, a flank cut, and empanadas to start.

There was a birthday cake as well, because the gathering fell on young goalkeeper Santiago Beltrán’s birthday. Midfielder Leandro Paredes came even though he was suspended for the match. He had no match to prepare for, which means he came for the dinner.

None of this was staged for one famous farewell. Ten days earlier, on September 24, Martínez had filmed another asado at the same complex. Infobae, the Buenos Aires news site, recorded his joke as the provoleta cheese hit the grate: a little lemon, he said, to bring the calories down. The team cooks like this all the time, and the same man is always at the fire.

The cook who has been there since 1999

His name is Diego Iacovone. He walked into the federation’s complex in January 1999, newly graduated from culinary school, when Marcelo Bielsa coached the senior team. His first trip was that year’s Copa América in Paraguay.

He has not left. Iacovone has cooked for Argentina under Bielsa, José Pekerman, Diego Maradona, Alejandro Sabella, Jorge Sampaoli and Scaloni, and this summer’s tournament in North America was his seventh World Cup at the grill, according to beIN Sports. Before the federation hired him he worked in hotel kitchens and, by Infobae’s account, prepared diplomatic lunches for Argentina’s state intelligence secretariat.

He does not care much for titles. “Cook, buffet man, short-order man, grill man, call me whatever you want,” he told La Nación, the Buenos Aires daily, in 2023. “I take care of the cooking.” He works beside Antonia Farías, the co-chef who handles the desserts and the breaded cutlets called milanesas.

Iacovone and Messi share more than a workplace. Both were born on June 24, a date that tends to fall in the middle of summer tournaments. La Nación reported that the cook has known the player since 2005, the year Messi made his senior debut. Asked about him, Iacovone skipped the soccer. “As a human being he is even better,” he said.

There is a small irony in the menu. By Iacovone’s own telling, the dish Messi and his teammates will not trade for anything is the milanesa a la napolitana with fries, a tavern plate. Infobae reported that it reminds the captain of his mother’s cooking. The asado belongs to the whole group, which is why a group goodbye had to be one.

A team that ships its own beef

Argentina takes this meal so seriously that it has reorganized World Cups around it. When the team went to Qatar in 2022, it lodged at Qatar University, and ESPN Deportes described the grill house set up on campus for the delegation. Scaloni explained the choice. The staff wanted everyone to feel as if they were at Ezeiza, he said, and that was why they needed the quincho and the grills.

The grills themselves flew in from Argentina. A small company called Fuegos JL won the job over 10 other bidders and sent four standard grills plus a larger model fitted with two iron crosses, the frames used to roast meat beside an open fire.

The beef came too. ESPN reported at the time that Argentina carried about 2,000 pounds of meat to Qatar. Infobae later put the full tournament total at 2,630 kilos for a 72-person delegation, with short ribs, known as asado de tira, the largest share. Whichever count is right, Iacovone cooked it across 50 days in Doha.

Scaloni told reporters then why it mattered. “My favourite food is the asado, but it’s more than that,” he said. “It creates an atmosphere of union and collective chemistry.” Argentina won that World Cup.

This summer the team did it again on a smaller scale. Canal 26, an Argentine news channel, reported that the federation moved 500 kilos of Argentine beef through U.S. customs to its base at a Kansas City hotel. Infobae counted five asados there during the tournament, each one opened by striker Lautaro Martínez starting the playlist.

That run ended one match short. Argentina lost the final to Spain, 1-0, on July 19 in New Jersey, and six weeks later its captain said he was finished.

Where the ritual comes from

The habit is much older than the team. The Buenos Aires city tourism board dates cattle in Argentine territory to 1556, and says herds on the open grassland called the pampas had grown to roughly 40 million head by the early 1700s.

The people who worked those herds were the gauchos, Argentina’s horsemen. According to the same history, they would stop at midday, hang pieces of meat over a fire on sticks, and eat together. That pause is the origin of the asado as a social event, which is why Argentines use the word for the gathering as much as for the food.

The appetite has lasted. Argentina’s agriculture secretariat counted 49.92 kilos of beef per person in 2025, about 110 pounds, as reported by the trade publication 3tres3.

The players carry the custom with them when they leave. ESPN reported in 2024 that a London grill maker had sold custom Argentine grills to eight of the 11 starters from that summer’s Copa América winners. Messi’s was a birthday gift from his former teammate Sergio Agüero.

One more match

The farewell itself is a friendly against Benin, with kickoff set for 8 p.m. in Buenos Aires. Al Jazeera reported that 85,000 people are expected at the Monumental, and that the squad that won the 2022 World Cup has been invited with their families.

Messi came into the week with 207 appearances and 125 goals for Argentina, along with a World Cup and two Copa América titles. Scaloni has said no one else will wear the number 10 until this match is played.

Messi’s own explanation for leaving was short. “I gave it my all,” he said in August. “I have nothing left to give, and besides, there are great young players coming up who deserve their chance.”

The stadium will give him the loud goodbye. The quiet one happened on Sunday, at a table in the grill house, with two grills, a cook who shares his birthday, and the cuts this team has always eaten together. In Argentina, that is how a family tells someone he will be missed.

Sources

Sports Illustrated, “‘Barbecue’: Emiliano Martinez Reveals Argentina’s Plan for Lionel Messi’s Farewell” (Oct. 5, 2026); La Capital, Dibu Martínez and the last asado with Messi (Oct. 5, 2026); La Gaceta, the farewell asado (Oct. 5, 2026); El Doce, Messi joins his last camp (Oct. 5, 2026); Contexto Tucumán, inside the farewell asado (Oct. 5, 2026); Al Jazeera, “Lionel Messi to join Argentina for farewell match against Benin” (Oct. 5, 2026); Infobae, the national team’s cook (June 19, 2026), the secrets of the team’s asados (July 9, 2026) and the September 24 asado; La Nación, “El cocinero de la Selección” (March 23, 2023); beIN Sports, Argentina brings a traditional asado to training camp (June 21, 2026); ESPN, “Argentina, Uruguay take 4,000 pounds of meat to World Cup” (Nov. 17, 2022) and “The BBQ king giving Pochettino, Messi, Alisson taste of home” (Sept. 13, 2024); ESPN Deportes, the first asado in Qatar (Nov. 16, 2022); Canal 26, 500 kilos of beef for the World Cup (June 12, 2026); Buenos Aires tourism board, “A brief history of Argentine beef”; 3tres3, Argentina meat consumption 2025 (Feb. 11, 2026).

Images: Lionel Messi photo via NBC News; farewell asado stills courtesy Emiliano Martínez on Instagram via La Gaceta; Messi with Diego Iacovone and the team asado courtesy AFA via Infobae.