For more than two decades, the No.10 shirt did not merely identify the player operating behind the forwards. Some footballers leave behind an empty position. Lionel Messi has left Argentina with an empty language. It meant the first pass after possession was recovered, the pause before an attack accelerated, the ball threaded through a defensive line and, often enough, the finish at the end of it. Argentina gradually constructed an entire footballing ecosystem around one extraordinary left foot. Now, with Messi having brought his international career to an end after one final World Cup campaign, Argentina face a problem no tactical diagram can solve simply by replacing one name with another.
Alexis Mac Allister presents another temptation. Moving him closer to goal, however, would diminish one of Argentina’s greatest existing advantages. Mac Allister’s ability to receive under pressure, escape the first line, and connect the midfield with the attack makes him considerably more valuable as an eight. Together with Enzo Fernández, he should construct Argentina’s platform rather than become its final creative destination.
He possesses the intelligence and technique to play higher and already wears No.10 at the club level.
There will inevitably be an appetite to identify the next No.10. His 2025-26 Serie A season produced 12 goals and seven assists and earned him the league’s Best Midfielder award. Because his football increasingly fits the job Argentina actually need filled, paz’s case is compelling. Because messi’s attacking output justified redesigning the team around him, argentina could accommodate Messi’s minimal defensive responsibility.
Argentina, perhaps more than any football nation, attaches cultural weight to the number. Diego Maradona carried it before Messi; Juan Riquelme briefly occupied the creative space between their eras. Yet the most important decision Scaloni makes will not concern the number printed on a shirt. It will concern which player is entrusted with becoming the principal creative reference of Argentina’s next cycle. But aesthetics are not evidence. Mastantuono remains a footballer in development. His senior club career has not yet provided the sustained volume of elite-level performances necessary to place an international attack on his shoulders. His ceiling may eventually be enormous, possibly greater than that of anybody else in this conversation, but Argentina cannot build the beginning of the next four-year cycle around what a teenager might become. At Como, he has developed from an intriguing attacking midfielder into a player capable of determining matches. More significantly, the underlying shape of those performances suggests a creator whose influence extends beyond the final pass. Paz ranked among the league’s most aggressive midfield shooters while also contributing substantially without possession. Replicating that arrangement for a lesser player would be absurd. Their next creator must contribute within Scaloni’s collective structure rather than exist outside it. Paz can. He is comfortable receiving between midfield and defence, but he does not need to remain there. He can drop towards the central midfielders to advance possession, drift into the right half-space, operate behind a centre-forward or arrive around the penalty area as a scorer. Como have even used him higher as a false nine. The significance is not that Paz can occupy several positions; modern football is full of nominally versatile players. It is that his fundamental behaviour survives those positional changes. He continues looking for pockets from which he can turn and advance the attack. This is where Argentina’s succession plan becomes considerably more interesting than simply handing somebody Messi’s shirt. Julián Álvarez can absorb a greater share of the goals and become the attacking reference. Mac Allister and Enzo can control progression from deeper areas. Almada can supply movement around the principal creator. Paz can occupy the space connecting those elements. In other words, Argentina do not need Paz to inherit everything Messi did. They need him to inherit the part around which the others can be reorganised.
