The Best Lionel Messi Shirts Of All Time

Some players wear a shirt. Lionel Messi redefines one. A gangly 17-year-old in a baggy Barcelona #30 becomes, within a few seasons, the reason grown adults queue up to buy that exact template two decades later - and it happens again with #19, then #10, then Argentina sky blue and white, then Paris navy, then Miami pink.

Messi jerseys also come up when we ask our contributors about their favourite kits: Luke Taylor and Renato Silva Gonçalves have both named a Messi shirt as their all-time favourite without being asked about him directly, and Phil Delves put it best when writing about why collectors fixate on one player at all - "you only have to look to the cult surrounding players like Messi and Ronaldo to see how passionate people can be."

We've sold Messi shirts across his Barcelona and Argentina eras (see the full sales breakdown below). Here's our countdown of the best shirts of his career, in chronological order, mixing contributor quotes with our own research where a shirt is too important to leave out.

What are the most iconic Messi shirts?

Barcelona 2004/05 Home (#30)

This is the shirt of the debut nobody quite knew they were watching. A 17-year-old Messi came on as a substitute for Barcelona in October 2004 wearing the club's #30 - the shirt of a promising kid in the academy pipeline, not yet the shirt of the best player who's ever lived. It's aged into one of the most collected "before he was Messi" shirts in football, precisely because so few people were paying proper attention at the time.

Argentina 2006 World Cup Home & Away (#19)

Messi's first World Cup, and one of Argentina's most talked-about nearly-moments. He came off the bench in the group stage and scored the shirt's most famous senior international goal to that point, becoming the youngest Argentine to score at a World Cup. But the shirt's real story that summer belonged to someone else.

"Perhaps my favourite shirt, however was Argentina's away shirt from 2006. The colour was great and I think of Riquelme in that shirt. Guess I like the national team shirts more than club shirts, perhaps a reason for that is modern sponsors, whose logo's often ruin a nice shirt!" - Matt Whitehouse

Juan Román Riquelme wore the same colours as Argentina's talisman that tournament - right up until he was substituted in the quarter-final against Germany, after which Argentina collapsed and lost on penalties, with Messi an unused substitute on the bench the whole game. It's a genuinely poignant shirt because of that: the last tournament where Riquelme was the main man, and the first where the next one was sitting right there waiting.

Barcelona 2008/09 Home (#10) - The Treble Shirt

Pep Guardiola's first season in charge, and the one where Messi properly arrived as the best player in the world rather than just one of them. He inherited the #10 this season after Ronaldinho's departure, and repaid it with a sextuple - League, Cup, Champions League and more - built around a front three that redefined how the position could be played. 

Barcelona 2009/10 Home (#10)

Back-to-back La Liga titles and, that December, Messi's first Ballon d'Or - the start of a run that would eventually make the award feel like a formality. A quieter shirt than the Treble season in terms of trophies, but the one that confirmed 2008/09 wasn't a one-off.

Barcelona 2010/11 Home (#10)

"Away from Newcastle, my favourite shirt is the 2010/11 FC Barcelona kit purely based on the team wearing it and how they played. Winning the Champions League against Manchester United with a sublime performance from Lionel Messi and the way they played throughout the season under Pep Guardiola was beautiful and probably the best team I've ever watched. Not only was it the way they played but the kit itself was exquisite. Simple red and blue with yellow trim. Lionel Messi and co. looked slick when taking over world football." - Luke Taylor

Hard to put it better than that. This is peak tiki-taka Barcelona, the side that beat Manchester United in the Champions League final at Wembley and made the rest of Europe look like they were playing a different sport. Messi picked up his second consecutive Ballon d'Or on the back of it. Simple red and blue, yellow trim, no fuss required - the shirt doesn't need to do any work when the football did all the talking.

Barcelona 2014/15 Home (#10) - The MSN Treble

"My favourite shirt is from Barcelona 14/15 season (worn by Messi). The design is incredible, it won us a Treble and the design is incredible. Have I said the design is incredible?" - Renato Silva Gonçalves

We'll allow the repetition - he's not wrong. This is the Messi-Suárez-Neymar season, Barcelona's second Treble in six years, capped with a Champions League final win over Juventus in Berlin. If the 2008/09 shirt is the one that announced him, this is the one that confirmed he'd built an entire era around himself.

Argentina 2014 World Cup Home (#10)

The World Cup that got away. Messi carried Argentina to the final in Brazil, picked up the Golden Ball for the tournament's best player - a call that split opinion given Argentina didn't actually win it - and then watched Mario Götze score the winner in extra time. Not currently in our archive, but one of the most searched-for shirts of his career, and a genuinely emotional one for Argentina fans regardless of the result.

Paris Saint-Germain 2021-23 Home (#30)

The strangest chapter, visually and otherwise. Barcelona's financial collapse forced Messi out of the only club he'd ever known, and he landed in Paris wearing #30 again - the same number he'd worn as a teenage substitute nearly two decades earlier - because Neymar already had the 10. Two Ligue 1 titles came with it, but it never quite looked like a natural fit, which is exactly why collectors treat it as a genuine curiosity rather than a classic. A gap in our own stock right now, and one we're actively sourcing.

Argentina 2022 World Cup Home (#10)

The one that finished the argument. Qatar 2022 gave Messi the only trophy his career was missing, sealed with arguably the greatest World Cup final ever played - a 3-3 draw with France settled on penalties after Messi had already scored twice. This is almost certainly the single most in-demand Messi shirt in the world right now, and it's not currently in our stock - a gap we're working hard to close.

Inter Miami Home (#10)

The victory lap that turned into something bigger than a victory lap. Messi's move to Major League Soccer reset the conversation around American football overnight, and he's still turning it out in pink for Inter Miami as of this season - still chasing trophies, still doing things at an age when most players have long since stopped. Not yet in our archive, but the shirt we expect the most demand for going forward.

What are the most popular Messi shirts?  Based on our sales data

Which is the most popular club Messi played for?

Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Miami shirts don't yet appear in our sales data at all, and neither does his 2022 World Cup-winning shirt - a genuine stock gap rather than a lack of demand, given these are arguably the three most in-demand eras of his career right now. We're actively sourcing here.

Which countries order the most Messi shirts?

Why buy your Messi shirt from Football Shirt Collective?

Messi shirts sit right alongside Ronaldo's as some of the most faked on the market - when demand is this global, fakes follow. Every shirt we sell is hand-checked, comes with 10+ photos so you know exactly what you're getting, and carries our no-fakes guarantee, backed by a 4.7 Trustpilot score and 500+ five-star reviews. Where we can, we stock shirts with official flock name sets rather than aftermarket printing - the same standard we apply to every legend shirt in our collection, not just the most famous 10 in the game.

Browse our authentic Lionel Messi football shirts collection, and if you want to see where a Messi shirt sits in good company, read Jamie Carragher's Football Shirt Collection, where his takes pride of place alongside Ronaldo and Thierry Henry.