Argentina has kicked off its FIFA World Cup 2026 campaign with a solid win. Lionel Messi was on fire, scoring a hat-trick to give his team a 3-0 victory over Algeria.
The defending champions Argentina have started their World Cup campaign with a bang. Lionel Messi was the star of the show, scoring a brilliant hat-trick in a 3-0 win against Algeria. But this wasn't just about the hat-trick; Messi left the field today after breaking a whole bunch of records.
In a fantastic coincidence, Messi scored this hat-trick on the exact 20th anniversary of his very first World Cup goal. That first goal came back in the 2006 tournament in Germany, which was also his World Cup debut. He scored against Serbia and Montenegro in a group stage match.
Fast forward twenty years, and in his 200th match for Argentina, Messi's hat-trick took his total World Cup goal count to 16. With this, he is now tied with German legend Miroslav Klose for the most goals in World Cup history. Fun fact: Messi is both the youngest and the oldest player to ever score a goal for Argentina.
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The records don't stop there. Messi is now also the third-oldest player to score in a World Cup. Only Cameroon's Roger Milla (42) and Portugal's Pepe (39) are ahead of him. He has also become the first player in World Cup history to score against 11 different countries.
He went past Brazil's Ronaldo and Germany's Jürgen Klinsmann, who had both scored against 10 nations. On top of all this, Messi also set a new record by becoming the first male player to feature in six different World Cups, and the oldest player to score a World Cup hat-trick.
In today's match, the first goal came in the 17th minute. Rodrigo De Paul sent a beautiful pass from the midfield, and Messi broke through the Algerian defence to score his first.
In the second half, Messi once again took advantage of mistakes in the Algerian backline to score his second. He completed his hat-trick in the 76th minute. Argentina's next matches are against Austria on June 22 and Jordan on June 28.
