Let Argentina leave the 10 empty.

In 1978, Argentina's World Cup squad was numbered alphabetically by surname, not by position. Goalkeepers got no reserved digits; the list ran straight through the alphabet from one end to the other. Mario Kempes's surname put him at number ten. It was not a decision about what the number would mean. It was an accident of where his name fell on a list.

Kempes did not treat it as an accident. At the tournament hosted by his own country, he scored twice in the final as Argentina beat the Netherlands 3–1 after extra time, and finished as the competition's top scorer with six goals, winning both the Golden Boot and the Golden Ball.

Eight years later, the same number carried a different weight. Diego Maradona wore the ten through the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, scored five goals — including the two against England that entered football's mythology on the same afternoon — and captained Argentina to its second title, beating West Germany 3–2 in the final.

After 1986, the number stopped being a squad number. It became an inheritance: the standard against which every Argentine who wore it after would be measured, whether they asked to be or not.

In Qatar, in December 2022, the number closed a forty-four-year circle. Lionel Messi wore the ten to a World Cup title — Argentina's first since 1986 — and was named the tournament's outstanding player, winning the Golden Ball. What had begun as an alphabetical accident in 1978, and turned into an inheritance in 1986, had finally been carried all the way.

Not everyone had agreed, even before Qatar, that the number should be treated as something reserved for one man rather than assigned match to match. In 2018, after Messi stepped back from the national team following Argentina's exit from that year's World Cup, the federation left the ten out of the squad for a pair of friendlies rather than give it to a teammate. Goalkeeper Sergio Romero objected publicly: "The No. 10 jersey has always been used. I don't understand why it's not being used now." His argument was not sentimental. It was structural — the ten is a squad number, reassigned by the coach for whichever match comes next, and holding it in reserve was already a break from how the number had always functioned.

It was his sixth World Cup. He was thirty-eight when it started and turned thirty-nine during the group stage. He wore the ten.

In the opening game against Algeria he scored a hat-trick — his first at a World Cup, twenty years after his World Cup debut as a substitute at Germany 2006. It took him level with Miroslav Klose's record of sixteen. A brace against Austria six days later took him past it. He kept scoring: against Jordan, against Cape Verde, against Egypt. He finished on twenty-one World Cup goals, and finished second on the all-time list, because Kylian Mbappé scored twice in the third-place match on the eve of the final and ended on twenty-two.