Messi’s exit leaves Argentina with impossible task of replacing their superhero | Lionel Messi

It isn’t quite over yet. Lionel Messi will return a week on Wednesday for his formal farewell in a friendly against Benin, but, before that, Argentina face two games when they will begin to experience a future without the most potent get-out-of-jail-free card football has known.

Messi’s international career falls into two distinct halves. There was the first decade when there was a sense…