Messi ties Klose as World Cup’s all-time top scorer, makes history

Lionel Messi moved level with Miroslav Klose at the top of the World Cup scoring chart, reaching 16 goals and turning another Argentina match into a landmark in soccer history. The latest surge came in a 3-0 win over Algeria, where Messi scored a hat-trick and put his name alongside the German striker at the summit of the tournament’s all-time list.

The performance was only part of the significance. Messi became the first player to appear in six different World Cups, spanning 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022 and 2026. FIFA noted that no other player has matched that kind of continuity across nearly two decades of the sport’s biggest stage, even as several have collected multiple appearances.

Argentina arrived at the 2026 tournament as the defending champion, and Messi’s latest display reinforced how central he remains to its title defense. FIFA also emphasized that he is the top scorer in Argentina’s World Cup history and the only player to score in the tournament as a teenager, a player in his twenties and again in his thirties, a rare stretch that maps the full arc of a career rather than a single peak.

The record chase also carries broader historical weight. FIFA’s official calendar placed Argentina against Austria in Dallas on June 22, 2026, in Group J, with Messi positioned to have a chance to stand alone at the top of the World Cup scoring list. That possibility follows a debut that already altered the record books and underlines how each Messi appearance now doubles as a referendum on where he belongs in the game’s canon.

If Argentina can defend its title, it would join a very short list of teams that have managed a World Cup repeat. Brazil was the last nation to do it, winning in 1958 and 1962. For Messi, the tournament has become a ledger of firsts, ties and thresholds, and the next one keeps pulling him deeper into soccer’s historical center.