The Argentinian’s international career was singular, and his exit is a reminder that all good things come to an end
It was among the defining moments of the 2026 World Cup: Lionel Messi standing arms akimbo, looking up towards Argentina’s fervent supporters after losing the final. Tears streamed down his face after his team’s embarrassing loss to Spain in what we now know was Messi’s final match wearing that famous Argentina kit.
It was not the first time he’d cried at the tournament. There had been tears of joy in Argentina’s opening match, when Messi rolled back the clock to his glory days with a trio of spectacular goals against Algeria. There had been more when his brace against Austria pushed Argentina through to the knockout round as group winners, and even more when his equalizer against Egypt threw la Albiceleste a much-needed lifeline. Later, the world found out that Messi had been struggling all the while with the health struggles of his father, Jorge, a fact that clearly weighed heavily on him as Argentina made a dramatic return to the final in a bid to defend their 2022 title.
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© Photograph: Peter Cziborra/Reuters
© Photograph: Peter Cziborra/Reuters
© Photograph: Peter Cziborra/Reuters
© Vincent Alban for The New York Times
Argentina great’s last game was in World Cup final
Player’s father Jorge died earlier in August
Lionel Messi has announced his retirement from international football seven weeks after Argentina were beaten by Spain in the World Cup final in the US. The 39-year-old captained Argentina to World Cup glory in 2022 and two Copa América titles after winning his first cap in 2005.
On Monday, Messi posted a picture on Instagram of notes that he wrote on 21 July, two days after the World Cup final, confirming he was ending his Argentina career and said the death of his father, Jorge, in early August made him feel “more convinced than before”. Messi was often visibly emotional during the tournament and revealed in the knockout stages that Jorge was undergoing medical treatment.
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© Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images
A graphic novel by Melissa Chan and Badiucao imagines China and the US at war in 2035. They hope to remind young people that ‘authoritarianism everywhere is bad’
Drinking Tsingtao beers, eating congee, walking with hands behind their backs: for many young people in western countries, “Chinamaxxing” has become all the rage. Some content creators have even gone beyond the jokes about being in “a very Chinese time in my life” and have followed this passion to the Middle Kingdom: making TikToks in Chongqing’s multilayered metropolis, bathing in Chengdu’s 24-hour spas or backflipping on the Great Wall of China.
This irreverent, mostly ironic trend is jarring for some, but Chinese Australian artist Badiucao and Chinese American journalist Melissa Chan don’t want to lecture the so-called Chinamaxxers.
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© Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
© Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
© Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
After Lindsey Graham’s death, Democrat Annie Andrews finds herself in a closely watched race as she seeks to flip his Republican seat
Annie Andrews was a dark horse Democrat challenging a five-term Republican in the US Senate when 314 Action, a political action fund devoted to electing scientists and doctors, first backed her.
Now, after the unexpected death of Senator Lindsey Graham, Andrews finds herself in a closely watched race. Donald Trump persuaded South Carolina voters last week to select Graham’s sister, Darline, as the new Republican candidate. They will face off in November in an election still heavily favored to keep the seat in Republican hands in the conservative state.
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© Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
Workers thought to be stuck in underground areas at 11 sites after last week’s devastating flash floods
Rescue teams are working to reach more than 900 missing hydropower workers, hundreds of whom are feared trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of 12 hydropower projects in Nepal after the devastating flash floods, the country’s disaster management authority has said.
The death toll from the unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud and debris on Wednesday last week has risen to 939 people, with 16 more dead reported in Tibet. More than 4,400 are missing on the two sides of the border.
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© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images
The home game against Frosinone seemed a perfect way to celebrate their landmark. It did not work out that way
Fiorentina’s 100th birthday party had been going for four days, starting with a fan procession through the historic centre of Florence on Wednesday night and extending to their home game against Frosinone on Saturday afternoon. The club was founded on 29 August 1926, but a decades-old discrepancy in the reporting of that date has led supporters to celebrate traditionally on the 26th.
This time they started a few hours earlier, gathering in their thousands beneath the marble façade of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella on the evening of 25 August and building to a firework show beside the river Arno at midnight. The club’s president, Giuseppe Commisso, stopped by to give a speech. At least one former player, Borja Valero, was among the crowd.
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© Photograph: Massimo Paolone/LaPresse/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Massimo Paolone/LaPresse/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Massimo Paolone/LaPresse/Shutterstock
Rights group claims 300 homes were destroyed in Tibet and number of missing people is ‘far higher’ than Beijing admits
A Tibetan advocacy group says hundreds of homes were destroyed on the Tibetan side of the border in last week’s deadly floods, raising questions about Beijing’s official account of the scale of the disaster.
Public discussion about the flash floods has been restricted, with security officials in Tibet announcing on Sunday that it had penalised at least 10 people for sharing “false disaster information”. There was no further information on the nature of the penalties.
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© Photograph: Jigme Dorje/Xinhua/AP
© Photograph: Jigme Dorje/Xinhua/AP
© Photograph: Jigme Dorje/Xinhua/AP
© Cnsphoto, via Reuters
Workers thought to be stuck in underground areas at 11 sites after last week’s devastating flash floods
Rescue teams are working to reach more than 900 missing hydropower workers, hundreds of whom are feared trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of 12 hydropower projects in Nepal after the devastating flash floods, the country’s disaster management authority has said.
The death toll from the unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud and debris on Wednesday last week has risen to 939 people, with 16 more dead reported in Tibet. More than 4,400 are missing on the two sides of the border.
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© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Prime Minister Secretariat, Nepal/AFP/Getty Images
Total number of missing Britons between Tibet and Nepal at 48 as Beijing mobilises more than 2,100 rescue workers
Fifteen British nationals are reported to be missing in China as the search continues for survivors of the devastating flooding in Nepal and Tibet.
Nepali and Chinese authorities confirmed an updated death toll of at least 810 on Sunday. More than 3,000 people are believed missing after flash floods triggered by a massive glacier collapse in the Himalayas on Wednesday engulfed Gyirong port on the Nepal-China border.
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© Photograph: China Daily/Reuters
© Photograph: China Daily/Reuters
© Photograph: China Daily/Reuters
Outsourcing the industry to China cannot continue, but Europe knows it can no longer count on the US for a solution
The alarm sounded 16 years ago. In 2010, China blocked exports of key rare earths to Japan in a row over disputed islands in the East China Sea. The critical minerals are essential to everything from advanced weaponry and iPhones to electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines, so the rest of the world took note. But it didn’t take much action. China still accounts for about 70% of rare-earth mining globally and 90% of separation and processing.
Then, last year, Beijing forced Donald Trump to back away from his trade war – not with its retaliatory tariffs, but the curbing of rare-earth exports. A scramble for new supplies began in earnest. The year-long trade truce is due to expire in November. The price of erbium, an element essential to communications infrastructure, has already jumped because of fears that export controls will soon be renewed.
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© Photograph: Imaginechina Limited/Alamy
© Photograph: Imaginechina Limited/Alamy
© Photograph: Imaginechina Limited/Alamy
Total of 804 confirmed dead and more than 3,000 missing amid threat of fresh inundation
Rescuers in Nepal and Tibet have battled through leg-sucking mud amid the threat of fresh flooding to search for thousands of people still missing after a deadly wall of water swept through the Himalayan border zone, engulfing entire villages.
The latest updates on Sunday put the number of missing at 3,048, including hundreds of foreigners. There was a total of 804 confirmed deaths across Nepal and Tibet, and reports of some bodies swept downstream possibly as far as India.
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© Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
When I testified against Mladić at his trial in The Hague, I saw the unrepentant face of a mass murderer. That face and his legacy still haunt Serbia today
Men age and die, but in the Balkans, time stands still and is stuck. General Ratko Mladić, who died in prison in The Hague on Thursday aged 84, remains a hero in the Republika Srpska statelet – the Serbian half of dismembered Bosnia that he carved out with a hurricane of violence between 1992 and 1995 – and in Serbia itself.
Too many Serbs in whose name Mladić carried out his mass murder of other ethnicities – mainly Muslim Bošniak and Roman Catholic Croats – adore him and mourn his passing.
Ed Vulliamy is an author who reported on the Balkan war for the Guardian and Observer
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© Photograph: Reuters
© Photograph: Reuters
© Photograph: Reuters
© Al Bello/Getty Images
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