There is a corner of the net that belongs to Lionel Messi. The world knows it. Goalkeepers know it.
On Tuesday night in Kansas City, he put the ball there for the third time in 90 minutes, completing a hat-trick against Algeria that was less a football match than a reminder — in case anyone had forgotten — of exactly who this man is.
As a teenager 20 years ago, donning a No. 19 shirt, he scored his first World Cup goal in a 6-0 rout of Serbia & Montenegro in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, a match otherwise famous for Esteban Cambiasso’s 24-pass team goal. On Tuesday, to the day, Messi scored his 14th, 15th and 16th — drawing level with German forward Miroslav Klose’s record — and walked off the turf to a standing ovation. He is 38, on June 24, he turns a year older. Time, apparently, works differently for him.
The hat-trick, in a 3-0 win, was his 200th appearance for Argentina. It was also, characteristically, a masterclass.
The first goal: the moment he received the ball outside the Algeria box, the outcome felt inevitable. He scores from those positions in his sleep, with a power and precision that no one else can replicate. The second: an instinctive read of the moment, anticipating that Alexis Mac Allister’s low, fierce shot would spill from the goalkeeper’s grasp — and he was already there, a prod, and then that smile. The third: the far corner, his favourite address. The whole world knows it. Nobody has ever found a way to stop it.
The display was also a statement of resilience. Messi had arrived at the tournament nursing a muscle strain, his fitness a subject of whispered concern. He answered in the only language he speaks.
The records were matched or left by the wayside. One more successful strike will make him the leader of the pack for the all-time men’s record for World Cup goals.
Among current players, Kylian Mbappe with 14 is most expected to beat Messi’s tally. Cristiano Ronaldo, the other modern great, has eight. Messi is also the first man to play in six World Cups, and the oldest to score a hat-trick in the tournament’s history.
To understand why Messi has aged into this version of himself — more ruthless, more liberated — one has to understand what leaving Barcelona did for him. The weekly grind of La Liga, the unrelenting scrutiny of Camp Nou, the expectation that never rested: by the time major tournaments arrived, the tank was running low. In Paris, with Ligue 1 offering a gentler rhythm, his body began to recover its shape. Then came Inter Miami in 2023, and Major League Soccer (MLS) — not a league that bruises a player the way European football does. The calculation was transparent, and it has paid off handsomely.
The transformation was already visible in Qatar four years ago. The man who had spent years being accused of going missing for his country arrived in Doha as a different animal. He cupped his ears in front of the Dutch bench after a penalty, taunting coach Louis van Gaal. He turned on striker Wout Weghorst after an ill-timed provocation — “Qué miras, bobo? Andá pa’ allá!” loosely translated as “What are you looking at, dummy? Go over there” — and the world finally saw the fury beneath the genius.
“This is not the Messi we have seen in the past,” former Argentina midfielder Maximiliano Rodriguez said during a Fifa event ahead of the final against France in Lusail. “He is different now.”
In the stands in Kansas City on Tuesday, cameras found Zinedine Zidane watching the match — his son Luca played as goalkeeper for Algeria. Zidane the manager had spent years on the Bernabeu touchline being tormented by Messi. Now it was the next generation’s turn.
US President Donald Trump, at a White House celebration after Inter Miami’s MLS Championship win earlier this year, asked Messi if he was better than Pelé — a player Trump had seen perform for the New York Cosmos. Messi looked visibly uncomfortable. It was a generous but unnecessary argument. Pelé, Maradona, Messi: three of the greatest the game has ever produced. Leave it there.
The arc of Messi’s international career is now one of sport’s great redemption stories. The Copa America in 2021 was the turning point — the first major national title that had eluded him for so long. The Finalissima followed in June 2022. The World Cup six months after that. The Copa America again in 2024. A man who once seemed cursed to fall short for his country has been drowning in trophies.
Under Lionel Scaloni, Messi operates with complete freedom. This Argentina is less a team than a unit with a shared language, and Messi is its author. The telepathyis real and, for opponents,intimidating.
How far they go in this expanded 48-team tournament — with five knockout rounds to navigate instead of four — is an open question. But for now, the show has begun. Messi has sounded the bugle.