In 1993, Argentina beat Mexico in the Copa America final and nobody thought much of it — just another title for a country that had already won the tournament thirteen times before. Nobody could have known it would be their last for 28 years. Diego Maradona retired. A generation of brilliant individual players — Batistuta, Riquelme, Aimar — came and went without a trophy. Then came Lionel Messi: widely considered the best player alive for a decade, and, for most of that decade, a player who had never won anything with his country. This is the story of the 28 years in between, the five trophies that followed in astonishingly quick succession, and the final in 2026 that finally ended the run.
Copa America, Ecuador
World Cup — lost in extra time
Copa America — lost on penalties
Copa America Centenario — lost on penalties
Copa America, at the Maracana
World Cup — won on penalties
Copa America, Miami
World Cup — lost in extra time
1993: The Last Time, For a Long Time
Argentina won the 1993 Copa America in Ecuador, beating Mexico 2-1 in the final. It was their 14th continental title, part of a football culture so used to winning that almost nobody paused to appreciate it. Diego Maradona was 32 and already past his prime. Within a few years he would be gone from international football entirely. Nobody in the stadium that day could have guessed that Argentina — a nation as obsessed with football as any on earth — would not lift another major trophy until 2021.
2014: Heartbreak in Brazil
By the 2014 World Cup, Argentina had a new talisman: Lionel Messi, already a three-time Ballon d'Or winner, playing in his second World Cup as the team's talisman. Argentina reached the final for the first time since 1990, meeting Germany in Rio de Janeiro. The match stayed scoreless through 90 minutes. In extra time, Mario Gotze volleyed in the winner for Germany, and Argentina lost 1-0. Messi was named the tournament's best player despite the defeat — a strange, hollow honor that came to define much of his international career up to that point: individually brilliant, collectively still empty-handed.
Back-to-Back Penalty Pain: 2015 & 2016
The next two years brought the cruelest possible repetition. At the 2015 Copa America in Chile, Argentina reached the final and lost to the hosts on penalties after a goalless draw. A year later, at the 2016 Copa America Centenario — a one-off edition held in the United States — Argentina met Chile in the final again. Again it finished 0-0. Again it went to penalties. Again Chile won. Messi missed his penalty in the shootout and, in the aftermath, announced his retirement from international football at just 29 years old, exhausted by a decade of coming desperately close and leaving with nothing. He reversed the decision within weeks, but the moment captured exactly how heavy the wait had become.
2021: The Breakthrough
Delayed a year by the pandemic, the 2021 Copa America finally broke the streak. Argentina met bitter rivals Brazil at the Maracana — the same stadium, almost the same fixture list of heartbreak that had defined Brazilian football's own history — and won 1-0 through an Angel Di Maria goal. Messi, at 34, had his first senior trophy with the national team. The 28-year wait was over. It would turn out to be only the beginning of the best stretch of Argentine football since Maradona's prime.
2022: Qatar and the Greatest Final Ever
A year later came the World Cup in Qatar, and a final against France that is now routinely described as the greatest in the tournament's history. Argentina led 2-0 with 10 minutes left. Kylian Mbappe scored twice in under two minutes to force extra time. Messi restored Argentina's lead; Mbappe completed his hat-trick to make it 3-3. The match went to penalties, and Argentina won the shootout, with Emiliano Martinez saving two French kicks. Messi lifted the World Cup at 35, in what he had said beforehand would be his final tournament. It remains, for most of the football world, the definitive image of a career finally completed.
2024: Defending the Crown
Argentina didn't stop there. At the 2024 Copa America in the United States, they beat Colombia 1-0 after extra time in the final, Lautaro Martinez scoring the only goal in Miami. It was Argentina's second consecutive Copa America title and their third major trophy in three years — a run of dominance that, briefly, made the 28 years of nothing feel like a different team's history entirely.
2026: The Streak Ends, Narrowly
Argentina arrived at the expanded 48-team World Cup in 2026 as defending champions, chasing a chance to become the first team to retain the trophy since Brazil in 1962. They opened with a statement: a 3-0 win over Algeria in which Messi, playing his 200th international match, scored a hat-trick to equal Miroslav Klose's all-time World Cup scoring record. Argentina won all three group games, then survived back-to-back extra-time scares against Cape Verde and Egypt in the knockout rounds. A win over Switzerland set up a semifinal against England, settled by two late goals — Enzo Fernandez in the 85th minute and Lautaro Martinez in stoppage time — for a 2-1 win.
The final, against Spain at MetLife Stadium, went to extra time scoreless before Ferran Torres scored the only goal of the match. Argentina lost 1-0, falling one win short of becoming World Cup football's first repeat champion in 64 years. It ended an extraordinary five-year run — two Copa Americas and a World Cup — on the one note that had defined so much of the 28 years before 2021: agonizingly close, and empty-handed.
28 Years of Nothing, Five Years of Everything
Argentina's story since 1993 doesn't fit the usual shape of a trophy drought. It isn't a slow, steady decline followed by nothing. It's 28 years of individual brilliance without collective reward, followed by the most concentrated run of success in the country's modern history — two Copa Americas and a World Cup in the space of three years — and then, in 2026, a reminder that even the best teams don't win every final. With Messi now 39 and the core of the 2022 team aging, the next chapter of Argentine football is an open question. But after 2021, nobody in Argentina needs reminding what winning again actually looks like.
The Road to the 2026 Final
See Argentina's full trophy history, live counter, and every major final on one page.
View Argentina's Trophy Drought →Published 2026-08-01