They came for Lionel Messi.
They came and packed MetLife Stadium on Tuesday night to the tune of a full sellout, for the chance to see this once-in-a-generation superstar play for Argentina in a 1-0 victory against Chile.
After the Argentines won their first World Cup since 1986 18 months ago in Qatar, and with Messi 37 years old and approaching the twilight of his career — it’s not clear whether this Copa America will be his last major tournament — there is a rock concert farewell tour feel to his matches, right down to being unsure whether there will be another farewell tour in a couple years.
Fans wearing No. 10 blue and white jerseys filled the parking lots hours before the 9 p.m. kickoff as if this was a fall Sunday.
Before the game started, they were bouncing in the lower bowl, belting out lyrics.
This didn’t feel like New York taking in Messi — it felt like Buenos Aires taking over New York, from the video that surfaced Monday night of Messi waving out his hotel window to fans camped out, as if he was in the royal family, to the belting rendition of the Argentine national anthem Tuesday night.
If you walked into this stadium without knowing a thing about what was happening, you still would have been able to tell when Messi had the ball at his feet because of how the noise changed.
At no other point was everyone so rapt, so fixated. When Messi slalomed through two defenders to set up a scoring chance 38 minutes into the game, there was applause in the press box.
This building hosted Taylor Swift last summer. Tuesday was the closest it’ll get this year to an encore.
Instead of Messi, though, what the fans got was Lautaro Martinez — the Argentine striker who scored 24 goals in Italy’s Serie A last year.
For all the parking lot and pregame atmosphere, this game took until the second half to come alive.
Chile, for 70 minutes, took a defensive posture that Argentina largely struggled to break down.
Finally, after Rodrigo Echeverria recorded Chile’s first shot — after 17 mostly listless attempts from the Argentines — the game opened up.
After a series of chances marked the late stages of the game, Martinez finally broke through for Argentina off a corner kick in the 88th minute, kicking in a rebound off the initial header.
That proved to be the only scoring here, meaning the closest anyone got to witnessing Messi’s magic was more subtle than anything that will end up on highlight reels.
That hardly mattered.
Everyone who came to see Messi was just as happy to see an Argentina victory, which will likely secure a Group A win with one match remaining.
And the tournament organizers, after this match, should have been as thrilled as anyone.
If you’re not following this Copa America, you should know a few things.
The first is that it’s essentially a dry run for the 2026 World Cup, when MetLife Stadium will host the final.
The organization running this, CONMEBOL, is different from FIFA, but it’s the next-biggest soccer tournament that the U.S. could possibly host, and it’s being played in a lot of the same stadiums that the World Cup will be, MetLife included.
The second is that it has struggled with attendance.
Not so much the actual numbers, which have been on par with what you’d expect, but with most games at football stadiums, there have been empty seats — quite a lot of them.
When Bolivia and Uruguay meet in New Jersey on Thursday, that’s liable to be a problem. On Tuesday, Messi was a one-man solution.
The third is that, like the World Cup, there’s a requirement for the fields to be grass.
That’s led to problems in some places, although it seemed manageable enough on Tuesday, with the only noticeable hiccups being a weird bounce here or there.
For a stadium whose turf has led to sustained criticism, it looked at least better than the alternative.
Of course, none of the fans in attendance seemed all too concerned about the playing surface.
They got what they came to see.
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