Tuesday, 23 June 2026
Tuesday, 23 June 2026
Every World Cup witnesses a competition that Fifa never recognises – a social media courtroom where the never-ending “GOAT” debate continues.
For football, Monday was a brilliant day. For social media, it was a tiresome one because, for years, keyboard warriors' ultimate football argument was Lionel Messi vs Cristiano Ronaldo, and then Kylian Mbappe entered the chat.
By now, even people living under a stone have heard Messi scoring twice against Austria to become the highest-scoring player in the Fifa World Cup. A few hours later, the French rising star entered the ground thinking, “can’t let him take all the spotlight’ and responded with a brace against Iraq.
Then, just when the internet had settled into its favourite pastime, replacing Ronaldo with Mbappe in the Messi-versus-who debate, Erling Haaland smashed in two goals for Norway against Senegal and barged into the conversation.
Within a few hours, social media ninjas decided they needed to set up a football courtroom. The viewers grabbed the popcorn.
Messi supporters put him on a pedestal and pointed at his newly made record — to be fair, at this point, you just need someone working full-time to keep track of the records the Argentine legend is making and breaking.
Mbappé fans pointed to the terrifying pace at which the Frenchman is hunting it down. And whenever either man does something extraordinary, social media users brought in Ronaldo just for ‘fun’.
Norway fans, meanwhile, decided they weren't about to be mere spectators in football's ‘who’s the biggest goal machine’ debate. Armed with Haaland's latest brace, they rowed straight into it and claimed a seat at the table.
All that meant only one thing – the meme factory working overtime.
One widely shared post juxtaposed Messi's 18 World Cup goals in 28 games against Mbappé's 15 in just 16, accompanied by a crying emoji avalanche.
Another declared Messi the ‘current GOAT’ and Mbappé the ‘future GOAT’, before adding a line guaranteed to rage-bait: "Ronaldo not even in the conversation."
Naturally, Ronaldo fans came to his rescue.
One user joked that whenever Ronaldo can no longer keep pace with Messi statistically, supporters simply "bring forward Mbappé to cope".
Some fans tried to initiate diplomacy. One shared an image of Messi and Mbappe and called them ‘World Cup Demons’ while another resurfaced an old Mbappé quote in which the French superstar described Messi and Ronaldo as football's best players. (Isn’t that just another way of sparking a maelstrom?)
Others just directly opted for ‘chaos’.
One particularly snide meme showed Mbappé dressed like an ambitious military commander with a caption underneath: "That record won't be there for long."
At 27 years old, Mbappé is already level with Miroslav Klose's former World Cup scoring tally and only two goals behind Messi, who was on a par with Klose just a few days ago.
Yet, for the fans and the anti-fans, the funniest twist in this entire debate may be Messi himself.
The World Cup was supposed to belong to football's next generation- Haaland. Mbappé. Jude Bellingham. Harry Kane.
Yet, the 39-year-old who will soon turn 40 continues to mess with the script.
One meme captured the mood perfectly. Above a top-scorers chart featuring Messi ahead of Haaland and Mbappé, the caption read: "This was supposed to be a battle between Haaland, Mbappé and Kane. Yet 39-year-old Messi still managed to come into the picture."
Some debates never die. They simply find a new World Cup.
