Lionel Messi marked his 200th Argentina appearance with a hat-trick against Algeria at Arrowhead Stadium on Tuesday, steering the defending champions to a 3-0 victory in Group J and reminding a global audience - many watching him live for the first time - that his powers remain extraordinary even a week before his 39th birthday. It was not merely a performance. It was, as it so often is when Argentina take to the World Cup stage, something closer to a communal act of faith.
To watch Argentina at a World Cup is to understand that football, at its most charged, can feel genuinely devotional. The banners in the stands carry quasi-religious iconography - none more famous than the image of Maradona and Messi with fingers touching, modelled on Michelangelo's Creation of Adam - and the roar that greets every Messi touch carries the weight of decades of longing. That fervour has animated Argentine football since the 1980s, when Diego Maradona stood alone at the summit of the sport, and it endured through lean years, false dawns and near misses until 2022, when Messi finally delivered the World Cup the country had ached for. Across the sporting world, other disciplines draw similarly passionate communities - followers of the nepal saptari pride league live coverage will recognise something of that grassroots intensity in the way sport binds people to something larger than themselves - but few spectacles match the scale of Argentina at a World Cup with Messi on the pitch.
The goals themselves were, by Messi's own rarefied standards, unremarkable in execution. The first, a lofted effort from 25 yards, was one that Algeria goalkeeper Luca Zidane ought to have held. The second arrived through sharp opportunism after Zidane spilled a shot from Alexis Mac Allister. The third was the exception: Messi shifted onto his left foot and drove a crisp, low strike inside the near post from just outside the penalty area. What elevated all three beyond their technical components was the context - a 38-year-old, on the World Cup stage, in the 200th match of an international career that has already produced everything the sport can offer.
Twenty Years on from Gelsenkirchen: A Career Defined by Outlasting Expectation
The timing carried its own symmetry. Exactly 20 years earlier, a teenage Messi came off the bench in Gelsenkirchen as Argentina defeated Serbia and Montenegro 6-0, immediately setting up a goal for Hernan Crespo and scoring one himself. Those watching in the press box that day sensed the significance, though caution was warranted: Argentine football had produced a long line of players anointed as Maradona's heir - Ariel Ortega, Pablo Aimar, Marcelo Gallardo, Andres D'Alessandro, Javier Saviola - each one a genuine talent, none close to filling those shoes. Messi, it turned out, had no interest in filling someone else's.
The journey between those two nights was not seamless. Messi has spoken honestly about the weight of playing for Argentina, a burden that appeared to press down on him most visibly at the 2014 World Cup, where the team reached the final only to lose to Germany after extra time. After defeat to Chile in the 2016 Copa America final, he announced his retirement from international football. He returned, steadied himself, and over the following years rebuilt his relationship with the national shirt into something that now looks indistinguishable from joy. The 2022 World Cup triumph in Qatar, at 35, felt like the narrative endpoint. It was not. He won the Copa America again in 2024, and now he has opened this World Cup with the kind of performance that rearranges the record books.
Messi Pulls Level With Klose at the Top of the World Cup Scoring Charts
Earlier on Tuesday, France captain Kylian Mbappe scored twice against Senegal - his 13th and 14th World Cup goals - moving above Messi to close within two of Miroslav Klose's all-time record of 16. Messi's hat-trick against Algeria brought him level with the German at 16, a detail Scaloni's post-match comment acknowledged in spirit if not in letter. "We see him every day and he still surprises," the Argentina head coach said. "He has been doing it for 20 years, for every single match." The joint record places Messi third on the all-time list of oldest World Cup scorers, behind Roger Milla - who netted for Cameroon against Russia at 42 in 1994 - and former Portugal defender Pepe, who scored at 39 in 2022.
Algeria, ranked 28th in the world before kick-off, were not without competitive spirit in the first half. They pressed, they organised, and for a period they looked capable of making Argentina work harder than the scoreline suggests. The difference, repeatedly and decisively, was Messi. He tracked back to win the ball twice inside his own penalty area in the opening minutes - a detail that says something about his engagement - and there was one moment that could have altered the evening entirely: a needless lunge in the first half that caught Algeria captain Aissa Mandi on the back of the leg and, at minimum, warranted a yellow card. The referee chose not to act. Messi was fortunate, and he made his fortune count.
A Final World Cup, Played Without a Whisper of Restraint
Messi departed to a standing ovation in the closing minutes, Scaloni rotating with one eye on upcoming Group J fixtures against Austria and Jordan in Dallas. Argentina's campaign is underway in precisely the manner their supporters dared to imagine. For those fans - the ones who held the banners aloft, who arrived at Arrowhead in his shirt, who have spent their lives investing something close to religious devotion in this man - Tuesday night was confirmation that the final chapter is not yet written.
If this is to be Messi's last World Cup, the evidence so far is that he intends to spend every minute of it reminding the world what he is. Given that he spent the evening matching a goal-scoring record set across multiple tournaments and multiple decades, it is difficult to argue with his methods.