Lionel Messi tied the men’s World Cup scoring record with a hat trick as defending champion Argentina defeated Algeria 3-0 in its opening match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, according to CBS News.
The 38-year-old captain scored all three goals for Argentina, raising his World Cup total to 16 goals across six tournaments and matching the mark set by former Germany striker Miroslav Klose, the competition’s all-time leading men’s scorer.
The performance was the 61st hat trick of Messi’s professional career, but his first at a World Cup. It also came 20 years after his World Cup debut for Argentina in 2006.
The Argentine captain also made his 200th international appearance, becoming only the third men’s player to reach that milestone.
Messi now needs one more goal to surpass Klose and become the top scorer in men’s World Cup history.
Rephrase in a different way as if you were a native American speaker as a content creation expert and do not talk about yourself or your experience in the text and do not show yourself as an artificial intelligence who wrote and fill the bullet point in the topic and speak the heart of the topic itself and dont take date of blog in ther first and dont take text like box of newsliter subscribe on post from content and romove all linke insert in content and and remove all affiliate disclosure phrases on content like this “This post may contain Amazon or other affiliate links that allow us to earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Please see our Disclosure Policy for more info” and “#” put in its place bullet point, and romove name of the web site or his links we are take a content from our new creation, and don’t publish clone new content more than just one time
