Messi hits historic hat-trick as Argentina opens World Cup title defense

On a day that looked tailor-made for football’s next generation, Lionel Messi still owned the stage. Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland each opened the World Cup with two-goal outings, but Messi answered with a historic hat-trick in Argentina’s 3-0 win over Algeria at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. In front of nearly 70,000 fans, the 38-year-old turned a night built for new stars into another reminder that the game still measures greatness through lasting memory as much as raw production.

The match was Messi’s 200th international appearance for Argentina and his fifth World Cup in which he has scored. It also made him the first man to appear in six FIFA World Cups, a milestone that underlined the reach of a career now stretching across two decades. Exactly 20 years after his World Cup debut for Argentina on June 16, 2006, Messi left the field to a standing ovation after becoming the oldest player to score a World Cup hat-trick. The performance also drew him level with Miroslav Klose’s men’s World Cup record of 16 goals.

Messi’s path to the record was as dramatic as the numbers. His first goal was initially ruled offside, but he responded by scoring from open play and then capped the hat-trick with a long-range strike that settled Argentina’s title defense. The timing mattered as much as the finishing: Argentina needed a statement result to begin its campaign, and Messi supplied the cleanest one possible.

Mbappé and Haaland’s opening braces still mattered. Both players showed why they are treated as the leading figures of the current era, with the scoring bursts that usually dominate a tournament’s first headlines. But at the World Cup, Messi continues to command a different kind of authority, one built on milestones, repetition and the sense that every landmark adds another layer to a career already judged against history. At 38, he is not just extending his own record book. He is still shaping the standard by which the tournament’s best are remembered.