Argentina came home to Ezeiza on Monday without Lionel Messi, and the welcome was cut down to a protocol act instead of the public celebration Javier Milei had floated the night before. Claudio Chiqui Tapia was first down the plane steps, followed by Nicolás Otamendi and Lionel Scaloni, as the return of the Albiceleste became a tightly controlled airport arrival rather than a citywide event.
The shift mattered because the plans had briefly pointed in the opposite direction. Milei had posted on Sunday night that the day chosen by the players and coaching staff for a celebration would be declared a national holiday, but that idea was later suspended after the group made clear it did not want a festive reception. The AFA said after the final that some players would leave directly from the United States for other destinations to rejoin their clubs or begin rest periods, which is why the squad did not come back as one unit.
The airport scene reflected that smaller scale. The delegation reached Argentina after 6:30 p.m. local time and moved only from Aeropuerto Internacional de Ezeiza to the AFA training complex in Ezeiza, with the reception limited to the sort of formal protocol generally reserved for heads of state on official visits. The Granaderos played Muchachos as the team disembarked, while fans waited in cars along the highway in the rain for a celebration that never fully arrived.
That left Messi as the story’s biggest unresolved point. He was expected to travel directly to Rosario on Tuesday to spend time with his family, but the available facts do not confirm that trip happened. What is clear is that Argentina’s return after the final was shaped less by ceremony than by restraint, with the players and coaching staff choosing separation, rest and private destinations over the public show Milei had imagined.
Messi had said after the final that the pain of the loss would be hard to close, even while stressing that the team had reached two straight World Cup finals and had once again united the country. On Monday, though, the image was far more subdued: a team arriving without its captain, a celebration reduced to protocol, and a homecoming that ended before it could become the scene many had been waiting for.
