'The game remains untainted': A look back on Argentine football legends' farewells

As Argentine football legend Lionel Messi gets ever closer to hisfarewell from the national team, a generation of fans will have to come to terms with the loss of a man who was ubiquitous for nearly 20 years. For the older fans, however, the sensation is bound to feel all too similar.

Less than 25 years ago, Diego Maradona, the man who made the Argentine No. 10 his own before Messi, bid farewell not just to the national team, but football as a whole.

With the Rosario-born star's bow out set to be one of the biggest events of the year, we decided to take a look back at the last time Argentina football bid farewell to its greatest star, as well as other historic sendoffs. Not a farewell Messi's farewell will come as most things did in his career: clean, sharp and orderly.

The Rosario-born star made a habit of perfection. At 41, El Diez wasn't that much older than Messi will be when he dons the Albiceste for the final time on Tuesday.

However, the chaotic years of Maradona's career made sure that his farewell wasn't a smooth sail into the horizon. After a suspension for his doping case at the 1994 World Cup, Maradona returned to Boca Juniors in 1995, to middling performance and an ongoing feud with club president Mauricio Macri.

Days away from turning 37, he hung up his boots after a Superclásico game against River, in which he played only the first half. Surviving near death in 2000 with an overdose-induced heart failure, and after a rehabilitation process in Cuba, the farewell game was announced for November 20, 2001.

Except it couldn't be called a farewell, with Maradona's team insisting on it being a "tribute match." 'The game remains untainted' The game, hosted at Boca's La Bombonera Stadium, featured Maradona for an Argentina team with many of the era's stars, such as Pablo Aimar, Javier Zanetti and Juan Sebastián Verón, going up against a team of stars from across the world. In front of them was a team featuring some of the biggest names in football, including Germany's Lothar Matthäus, Colombia's Carlos Valderrama, Bulgaria's Hristo Stoichkov and France's Eric Cantona.

Ironically, the man who took over from Maradona as Boca Juniors' No. 10, Juan Román Riquelme, played for the Rest of the World team, as he wasn't a regular for then Argentina head coach Marcelo Bielsa.

The match had it all, from Colombian goalkeeper René Higuita saving a long-range shot from Maradona with his iconic airborne scorpion kick save, to Argentine rock legend Charly García getting lost at La Bombonera and accidentally going out to the pitch to the fans' clamor, and Brazilian legend Pelé waving to the crowd from an executive box and getting booed.