The United States is now fully acquainted with Lionel Messi, with the playmaker approaching three years at Inter Miami, but there was still something special about the occasion in Kansas City.
Messi is approaching his 39th birthday, meaning surely this will be his sixth and final World Cup. The eight-time Ballon d’Or winner is the first player to ever appear at six tournaments and he isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
In his 200th appearance for Argentina, Messi ran the show against Algeria. He scored his 118th, 119th and 120th goal for his country = his first World Cup hat-trick – and made it 16 World Cup goals, moving clear of the great Brazilian Ronaldo and level with Germany striker Miroslav Klose on 16 as the tournament’s all-time record scorer.
While Kylian Mbappe could have something to say about that, having moved onto 14 strikes himself by scoring twice in France’s 3-1 win over Senegal, he is still some way short of Messi’s stature in the game.
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Cristiano Ronaldo will join his long-time rival in playing at a sixth World Cup on Wednesday when Portugal play DR Congo. But given he only has eight World Cup goals to his name, he will have to go some to keep pace with the Argentina master, who became the oldest player to score a brace at the World Cup, after Mbappe and Erling Haaland also bagged two in their matches, and then added another to become the highest scorer of the 2026 tournament and write the biggest story of the World Cup so far.
Lionel Scaloni deserves a lot of credit for how he has set up his team to compliment Messi, who has the keys to the team without negatively impacting it. The defending champions looked the part as FIFA president Gianni Infantino looked on.
Messi’s longevity is shown by his remarkable and unrivalled statistics, but also by the goalkeeper he beat on two occasions. Luca Zidane is the son of Zinedine Zidane – a player Messi faced on the pitch in El Clasico and in the dugout as a manager.
View 2 ImagesLionel Messi is the oldest player to score a World Cup hat-trick(Image: Charlotte Wilson/Getty Images)
The 28-year-old goalkeeper certainly gave the great man a helping hand. He was unable to keep out his 25-yard effort, pushing it into the top corner for 1-0. And he also obliged by palming out Alexis Mac Allister’s long-range effort into Messi’s path for a nonchalant rebound tap-in.
The third was textbook Messi, receiving the ball on the edge of the box, wriggling into space and dispatching a low finish into the bottom corner. Minutes later, he left the pitch to a standing ovation as Scaloni moved to protect his talisman.
On this evidence Klose will be eclipsed in the near future. And while Mbappe is likely to move clear at the top of the list in time, given he’s only 27 years old, Messi has use this tournament to further establish himself as the undisputed greatest of all time.
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