Long goals: how Messi broke the World Cup record

Lionel Messi added another one to his numerous records — he became the top scorer in the history of the final stages of the World Cups. After a double in the match against the Austrian national team, the forward of the Argentine national team scored 18 goals at the world cups. According to this indicator, he surpassed the German Miroslav Klose, who finished his career with 16 goals. However, the Argentine is already closely followed by French national team striker Kylian Mbappe, who also scored 16 goals at the World Championships.

Moving towards a record

For Messi, the current World Cup was the sixth in his career. This is another record of the tournament, which in 2026 the Argentine shared with another superstar of world football Cristiano Ronaldo, as well as goalkeeper of the Mexican national team Guillermo Ochoa.

Before them, even participation in five World Championships was reserved for a few. But it was Messi who took full advantage of the opportunity to surpass Miroslav Klose's achievement. The German has competed at four World cups — in 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014. In all cases, his national team was among the winners, and at the World Cup in Brazil, Klose broke the record of Brazilian Ronaldo, who scored 15 goals at tournaments in 1998, 2002 and 2006.

Messi scored his first goal at the World Championships exactly 20 years before the current record. At the 2006 tournament in Germany, the 18-year-old striker came on as a substitute in the 74th minute of the group stage match against Serbia and Montenegro. The very fact that his debut came in a game with the national team of a state that does not exist now shows well how long the path of the Argentine turned out to be at the World Championships.

During the allotted time, Messi managed to give an assist to Hernan Crespo and score on his own, and his team defeated the opponent 6:0. At that time, he was not yet the main player of the Argentine national team, so he did not have the opportunity to constantly enter the field. The team reached the quarterfinals without him, where they lost to the German hosts on penalties 2:4, after a 1-1 draw in regular time. Interestingly, the same Klose who equalized the score in the 80th minute saved the Bundestim from defeat in regular time.

Messi scored his next goal in the tournament only eight years later. And here his record is unique in that for a long time the conditions for chasing leaders in the national team of Argentina left much to be desired. In the second half of the noughties, Lionel became the main player and leader of Barcelona, won the first Champions League with her and won the first Golden Ball. At the national team level, he won the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, but could not achieve success in the national team, largely due to the playing crisis of the entire team with constant changes of coaches.

The team went to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with Diego Maradona as head coach. Perhaps the best player in the world of the last century initially seemed like a dubious figure as a coach, as he had no successful experience in this business. And the national team under his leadership was equipped in a strange way, played according to strange tactics, in particular, with Messi as a midfielder, not an attacking player.

As a result, she also lost to Germany in the quarterfinals, but this time she lost 0-4. Messi gave one assist at the tournament, but did not score once. At the same time, for the first time, a bet was placed on him as a leader, in several games Maradona even entrusted him with the captain's armband.

At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Messi arrived for the first time as a full-fledged star of a well-organized national team of Argentina. Her head coach, Alejandro Sabella, played boring defensive football, but he helped her reach the final, and Lionel was largely responsible for the game ahead.

In the group stage, he scored four goals, one each for Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iran, and scored a double against Nigeria. In the playoffs, Messi was no different, except for the converted penalty in the post-match series of the semi-final against the Netherlands (4:2).

Otherwise, the Argentine scored only an assist in the 1/8 finals match against Switzerland. The team achieved the result primarily due to reliable defense, although it was Messi who was recognized as the best player of the tournament. However, the championship ended with a triumph for Germany, which won the final 1-0 in extra time. It was then that Klose set a new record for performance at the World Championships.

In 2018, in Russia, Argentina was eliminated in the 1/8 finals by the future world champion France (2:4). Messi scored only one goal in the group against Nigeria.

At a time when the best years of his club career were over. In the early 2020s, Messi left his native Barcelona, briefly played in France for PSG, and then left for the United States, where he still plays for Inter Miami. But with the new head coach of the national team of Argentina, Lionel Scaloni, he opened up as much as possible in the national team.

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At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the team won gold for the first time in 36 years. Messi has scored seven goals. He scored in every stage, including the final against France, where he scored two goals. In the same place, his current pursuer among the World Cup scorers, Killian Mbappe, scored a hat-trick. As a result, the teams played 3-3, both stars scored a goal in the penalty shootout, but the Argentines turned out to be stronger (4:2).

At the current World Cup, Messi started with a hat-trick against Algeria (3-0) and equaled Klose. In the second round of the group stage against Austria on the evening of June 22, Moscow time, Lionel did not score a penalty in the first half, but then scored twice from the game and now set a record. And it so happened that he scored 12 of the 18 goals at the end of his career, after 35 years.

—Messi achieved such a record thanks to his incredible talent and hard work, despite the fact that his path was extremely difficult," Anatoly Byshovets, a former striker and former head coach of the USSR national team, shared his opinion with Izvestia. — He did not immediately become a key figure in the Argentine national team, and in the best years of his club career, when he was 23-31 years old, the team was in a state where the coaches could not fully unleash Lionel's abilities. In South Africa and Russia as a whole, Argentina was unbalanced as a team, and in Brazil it was too focused on defense. This is not what Messi used to play at Barcelona under Guardiola and Luis Enrique. But with Scaloni in the Argentine national team, they found something to offer a player of this level. Yes, in many ways the team is too focused on one player, but it was worth it, as the last World Cup showed. And we must pay tribute to Messi that he had the character and professionalism to keep fit by the age of 35 and 39 and take the chance to show his best game already in the national team.

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Mbappe is the closest pursuer

Unlike Messi, Mbappe achieved major successes in the national team during the best years of his career for most players. By the age of 27, he had already scored 16 goals in three World Cups. Together with the French national team, he won the tournament in 2018 in Russia, and four years later reached the final in Qatar.

At the same time, Mbappe has not yet reached the heights of Messi at the club level. He has never won the Champions League. It is noteworthy that two years ago, Kilian became a participant in one of the most high-profile transfers of recent years, moving from PSG to Real Madrid. After his departure, the Parisians won the Champions League twice, while the Spanish club, on the contrary, stopped winning the tournament, although the last time it took the trophy just before the arrival of the French striker.

"Killian is certainly a talented striker, probably the strongest in the world in the last 10 years,— Anatoly Byshovets added. — But unlike Messi, he was not a key figure during the victorious 2018 World Cup. After all, the team play and discipline built by head coach Didier Deschamps were more good there. Mbappe has already played a big role in Qatar 2022. But so far, he doesn't give the impression of being a complete team player, unlike Messi. And this prevents him from standing in line with him. Although he may eventually break the record for World Cup goals due to his individual skill.

Argentina and France have already secured entry into the playoffs of the current World Cup. They only have one match left in the group stage.