Messi ties Klose's World Cup goal record in Argentina's 3-0 win
On his 200th appearance and in a sixth World Cup, the Argentina captain answered the only question left about him with three goals in Kansas City.
Lionel Messi scored the first World Cup hat trick of his career on Tuesday night, dragging Argentina to a 3-0 win over Algeria in Kansas City and pulling level with Miroslav Klose's record of 16 goals at the tournament.
The defending champions had labored for an opening before Messi settled it himself: a left-footed strike from the edge of the box in the first half, then two more after the break in front of a crowd at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium that had spent two weeks rehearsing for exactly this. He came off late to an ovation.
It was Messi's 200th appearance for Argentina and his sixth World Cup, a competition he first played 20 years ago. At 38, he is now the oldest man to score three times in a World Cup game, and only the second to score across five different editions. The numbers keep arriving whether or not he wants them.
"It's an honor being up there for what it means, being alongside Klose and [Brazil's] Ronaldo, who is there also. But it doesn't mean anything."
Lionel Messi, speaking after the match
He almost argued against his own milestone. For me, Ronaldo, who I watched and is one of the greats, is not at the top. So, it's just stats.
That was vintage Messi, handing a record back to the men he grew up watching.
The treble was the 11th of his international career and his first at a World Cup, an odd gap given everything else on the record he now shares with Klose. The win moved him level with the German on 17 World Cup victories, and it was the fifth straight World Cup match in which he has scored. When he walked out for the opener, he also became the first player to feature in six World Cups. Cristiano Ronaldo can match that mark on Wednesday against Congo. Messi beat him to it by a day.
His teammates talked less about the ledger than about what he does to a dressing room. If anyone thought this team was better without Leo, today it was proven that the opposite is true,
midfielder Alexis Mac Allister said. Rodrigo De Paul, who has followed Messi from club to country, put it plainly: He doesn't care about individual records. He prioritizes the group, and for us it's incredible.
The reaction from inside the game came fast.
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Messi's night did not happen in a vacuum. Hours earlier Kylian Mbappe scored twice for France against Senegal and Erling Haaland marked his World Cup debut with two for Norway, the day's headline acts mostly delivering while the favorites kept slipping. Spain were held to a goalless draw by debutants Cape Verde, and Brazil were pegged back by Morocco. Against that, Argentina's three points read like a statement.
Argentina were not flawless, and their captain said so, noting that the opening games of a World Cup are always tough and that nobody is giving anything away. They travel to Dallas to play Austria on June 22 with top spot in the group already in view and, against the calendar, still the difference. A goat led on stage by a Fox broadcaster before kickoff turned out to be the least subtle prediction of the night.
