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A hat-trick against Algeria equalled Miroslav Klose’s World Cup scoring record, but Messi and his teammates insist the mark doesn’t matter to himLong after the dust had settled on Argentina’s 3-0 group-stage victory over Algeria on Tuesday night, Algeria and Bayern Munich midfielder Ibrahim Maza wearily emerged from behind a curtain and stepped up to the microphone.Maza had played well, even assisting on Algeria’s disallowed first goal. He’d also had a front row seat to a Lionel Messi masterclass, just a few yards away from Argentina’s captain when he scored his third goal of the evening and tied Miroslav Klose as the World Cup’s all-time leading goalscorer. In short order, he was asked to expand on what made Messi unplayable on Tuesday evening.“Messi things,” Maza said, a smile creeping across his face. “I don’t think I need to explain to you [what that means]. I think you just have to watch the game and then you’ll know what I mean by Messi things. He can decide the game on his own, as we saw today.”Messi did indeed decide the game on his own on Tuesday, scoring a trio of clinically-taken goals to bury Algeria and push Argentina to the brink of the knockout round.He did so 20 years to the day after scoring his first World Cup goal for Argentina. It feels sometimes like Messi is ageless, but rolling the tape on that strike – which came in Argentina’s 2006 group stage opener against Serbia and Montenegro – reveals a mop-headed teenager with alien-like speed and reflexes. He blurs across the area and smashes a finish across the face of goal, announcing his presence on the world stage.He became Argentina’s youngest-ever World Cup goalscorer that day and on Tuesday he became their oldest, eclipsing former Argentina great Martin Palermo’s record by over two full years. Messi moves slower now and undoubtedly enjoys the space he’s frequently given by defenders who fear humiliation at his hands. Twenty years on, Messi lacks a little pace but his mind is as sharp as ever, as is his ability to find space where there isn’t any to be found. He remains awe-inspiring.Not long after Maza slipped back through the curtain and headed towards the team bus, Messi himself emerged, smiling and clutching a Michelob Ultra “Superior Player of the Match” trophy, probably the least important silverware he’s ever touched.Messi, of course, is famously competitive and frequently minimizes these types of individual accomplishments, something he did on Tuesday.“Honestly [the record doesn’t matter],” he told a gaggle of reporters. “It’s an honor to be there, for what it means to be next to Klose, [Brazilian] Ronaldo is also there. [Kylian] Mbappé too, he scored twice today. At the end of the day it’s just a statistic and nothing more. ”It’s easy to question the veracity of Messi’s feelings, of course. He is relentlessly competitive, sometimes to the point of pettiness. The mere mention of Mbappé’s goals, scored hours earlier, and of the other participants on the list, demonstrates his interest.Messi’s Argentina and Inter Miami teammate Rodrigo De Paul, who assisted on Messi’s first goal on Tuesday, laughed when he was asked about Messi’s record.“I swear he doesn’t care. Sometimes we’ll be in a room drinking mate and we’ll tell him ‘hey man, you’re just one away or two away’ or whatever. And I swear he has no idea. I don’t know how that works.”Messi left Tuesday’s match after 80 minutes to a thunderous ovation. The nearly 70,000 in attendance chanted his name, while Messi raised his arms in acknowledgement. His head coach, Lionel Scaloni, met him at the touchline. He was visibly emotional, holding back tears as he eventually sat down on the bench next to Messi. It was not the only time that emotion got the best of him. He welled up after Messi’s third goal, and again on the field as Argentine supporters serenaded their team after the match.“There are no words; anything I say would be superfluous,” Scaloni said after the match. “It’s what he’s been doing for 20 years, it’s what the people of this sport want to see.”“He’s an animal,” added De Paul. “What makes me the happiest is that I feel like he’s enjoying it. That he doesn’t feel the weight of the pressure that he felt for so long. Everyone knows his mentality. He doesn’t let himself enjoy things much because he’s always focused in helping us and the team. But I see him good now, I see him happy. That’s contagious among the group.”Messi’s happiness was easy enough to see on Tuesday night. He beamed after every goal, celebrating much like the 19-year-old who found the back of the net for the first time 20 years ago. He lingered on the pitch after the final whistle, waving at fans and embracing his teammates. He had a warm smile on his face even as he walked towards the team bus, in the wee hours of the morning.

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Those in attendance at Argentina’s opening match against Algeria could be forgiven, for a moment, for thinking they were at one of the great Argentinian cathedrals of football – La Bombonera, or maybe the national stadium, El Monumental. Kansas City Stadium, awash in the colors of the Albiceleste, roared with the sound of nearly 70,000 Argentine supporters serenading their team, and their hero, in rapturous song on Tuesday night.Argentina rose to the occasion, and so did Lionel Messi, who in his 200th cap took another step towards solidifying his place as the greatest footballer in the history of the sport, scoring three splendid goals and tying Germany’s Miroslav Klose for the all-time goal scoring mark in World Cup play (16), the performance coming just hours after France’s Kylian Mbappé leapfrogged him, with 14.The Inter Miami midfielder also became the first male player to appear at six World Cups, a record that feels certain to be equalled by Cristiano Ronaldo when Portugal begin play. Messi had been recovering from a muscle injury in recent weeks but any doubt surrounding the Argentinian captain’s status was quickly wiped away when he was named to Lionel Scaloni’s starting XI, and those doubts were ancient history once the match began.Messi had very nearly nabbed Argentina’s opener just five minutes in when a through-ball found him at the near side of the box. His shot was perfectly placed, but assistant referee Tomasz Listkiewicz correctly flagged him offside by the smallest margin. Not two minutes later, Algeria winger Farès Chaïbi had an equally clinical finish waved off after finding himself offside by a similarly narrow margin.Messi wasted little time putting Argentina ahead, finding the back of the net in the 17th minute. His Inter Miami teammate Rodrigo De Paul found Messi 40 yards out, after which the former Barcelona star turned and took three touches towards goal. With no defenders in sight, his driven shot from the edge of the area was too powerful for Algeria keeper Luca Zidane, glancing off his fingertips and into goal.The one negative mark on an otherwise brilliant performance came in the first half, with Messi fortunate to escape without punishment after a rash challenge in which he raked his cleats across the back of Algerian defender Aïssa Mandi’s calf. The Argentinian likely deserved a yellow, and potentially even a red. He received neither, and the play was not reviewed on the field.Messi’s second goal of the night was even more easily taken than his first. Liverpool midfielder Alexis Mac Allister’s speculative effort from 30 yards was pushed away by Zidane directly into the path of Messi, who coolly slotted it home from close range in the 60th minute. Again, Algeria’s backline was nowhere to be found. Argentina, on the other hand, were excellent defensively throughout the entire match.The Argentinian legend completed his hat-trick in the 76th minute with a vintage finish, threading his strike through a trio of defenders and just out of reach of Zidane. He left the match minutes later.Both fanbases have been well-represented for days in Kansas City and nearby Lawrence, Kansas, where Algeria will be based for the entirety of their tournament. Thousands of Argentinian supporters packed a local park on Monday night for a banderazo, singing, chanting and dancing into the wee hours. The party moved Tuesday evening to the stadium, which was full of noise hours ahead of kickoff.Algeria’s supporters have been the subject of a remarkable story in Lawrence, where residents have welcomed them with open arms. Though understandably outnumbered by opposing fans, loud, vibrant pockets of green emerged from Argentina’s blue-and-white at times, urging the underdogs on.The 28th-ranked Algerians will have hoped for a happier return to the World Cup after a 12-year absence, having been revitalized under head coach Vladimir Petković. Algeria earned a reputation during qualifying for their high-energy approach, glimpses of which were present on Tuesday, particularly in the closing moments of the first half. Despite some promising exchanges, they were undone by poor finishing and never looked particularly competitive.Algeria’s encounter with Jordan now has the makings of a must-win; they feel much more evenly matched with Austria.Scaloni had tempered expectations out of Tuesday’s match in the lead-up, going as far on Monday as to say that a win against the Desert Foxes was far from necessary. Scaloni should know; he was at the helm in 2022 when Argentina narrowly lost in their group stage opener to Saudi Arabia, among the most shocking results in World Cup history.Expectations aside, Scaloni will surely be pleased with three points, which bring Argentina towards the precipice of the last 32. They’ll meet Austria in Arlington, Texas, on Monday. Messi, as is his custom, will be expected to make even more history there.

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What about Algeria? Even Maher Mezahi isn’t sure what to expect.double quotation markAlgeria are one of this World Cup’s great unknowns. On paper, this team has an impressive recent record: a friendly victory over the Netherlands made it 21 wins, four draws and three defeats from 28 matches under Vladimir Petkovic, with 67 goals scored. The problem is that it has been achieved against generally poor-quality opposition. Algeria’s qualifying campaign was a breeze, with Guinea and Mozambique – both considered Pot C sides on the continent – being their sternest tests.We can be pretty sure Petkovic will lean on his players’ technical quality, play attractive football, but leave gaps in behind the defence. What we don’t know is which players will be called upon for half the starting positions.

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Luciana Alvarengue likes to think she had the smallest of influences on two of her old pupils as they take aim at another World CupFor all Argentinians, sitting down to watch the 2022 World Cup final was special – but for Luciana Alvarengue there was additional emotion. In the Argentina side were not one but two players to whom she had taught maths at school: Enzo Fernández and Julián Álvarez.“They are still my students, even if they are no longer in the classroom,” she says. “To see it with my son telling me: ‘Mamá, there are your students’ … that’s really nice.”Alvarengue was 26 when, in 2012, she took a job at the school run by River Plate. The school was housed at Estadio Monumental, which meant lessons would be cancelled if River had a midweek game. Now, though, they have moved to a purpose-built facility a few minutes’ walk from the stadium. The school hall is dominated by six photographs – lvarez, Fernández, Gonzalo Montiel, Exequiel Palacios, Germán Pezzella and Guido Rodríguez: the players who attended the school who were in the 2022 World Cup squad.The school is not just for footballers, or even for sportspeople (River also run teams in a wide variety of other sports, from hockey to chess), but Alvarengue soon realised the role was quite different from anything she had done before. Many of the pupils live in club accommodation, away from their families, and that meant they tended to form closer bonds with their teachers. “The boys would come and give you a kiss when they came to greet you,” she says. “‘Good morning, teacher, good afternoon.’”That was particularly true of Álvarez, who is from Calchín, in the province of Córdoba, seven hours’ drive north-west of Buenos Aires. Away from his family, he needed more emotional support and would regularly give Alvarengue a hug. Álvarez was 12 when she started teaching him, Fernández 11; she taught both up to the age of 14. They were in different school years and very different personalities.“You either love maths or you hate it,” Alvarengue says. “There are no grey areas. Julián was very good at maths. He had a very good way of working in the classroom in general. Enzo was a little more difficult to deal with. There are days when you would say he was more focused on a game, on whether he was going to be selected or not.“When he came into the classroom, Enzo liked to make sounds, banging his pencil case on the table. I remember entering the classroom, and on the left side was Enzo’s place, and he was with his back against the wall, his feet on the other bench, and there were days when he was like: ‘Today I’m going to stay like this.’ Julián was calmer, much more respectful.“In Enzo’s case, he was always thinking about football, what he wanted to do, who they were playing. And about what game was coming next, how he saw it, if they needed to make any changes, if they had to travel – it was 100% football all the time.“I couldn’t start any class without asking him how the weekend went. Julián in the school environment was more focused on saying: ‘I’m at school, I’m going to study.’ But the two were always very positive leaders in the classroom. It was very nice to talk to them because it seemed that you were talking to adults, not children.”That maturity, Alvarengue says, is characteristic of the best players. “It’s their teammates who notice there’s something special about them,” she says. “It’s not that they’re leaders of the group and always end up being captain, but they would tell others that they don’t know how to play. You can see a different discipline in football players. I always say that goalkeepers are extremely disciplined.”That means sacrifice. Alvarengue remembers Álvarez once being upset because he could not go on a camping trip because of his footballing commitments. Athletes were banned from PE lessons at school, but teachers would find themselves constantly having to intervene as impromptu games broke out using a scrunched-up ball of paper or a can as a ball. “We were terrified they would get injured,” Alvarengue says.Fitting education around pupils’ sporting commitments was never easy, which is one of the reasons the school was set up. It is common for pupils to be away for a fortnight or more on tours or for tournaments, but teachers are used to preparing work for them to take with them, and coaches then to supporting them in completing the prescribed exercises. The key is persuading students that education is part of their development as an athlete.“Their head really says: ‘I want to do this, I want to succeed in sport,’” Alvarengue says. “And they don’t understand that education is part of being able to react quickly to a stimulus, to understand a word, to improve their speed to obtain certain things. So we always try to orient the academic part to something that they can see reflected in their training,.In mathematics, for example, we often work on statistics. So: ‘What were your stats? How many games did you play? How many goals did you score?’ They need to see that what we are teaching them really is useful for their sports career.”Fernández in effect quit school at 14 but, acknowledging the importance of education, completed his studies remotely in his late teens while playing for River’s first team.What would the pair have done if they had not made it as footballers? Alvarengue is reluctant to answer, saying she cannot conceive of them doing anything else, but eventually agrees that Álvarez could have done something that required a university education, and been a lawyer or an accountant. And Fernández? “He really liked hitting things,” she says uncertainly. “So, a drummer?”Players are never formed by a single club or one coach, but by a range of influences. As she watched Argentina beat France in the final in Lusail, Alvarengue could reflect that she had played some small part in their triumph. “I can always think that they passed through our classrooms. I hope they took something away.”

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Argentinian’s legacy has no need for another World Cup but return allows hosts to witness his international curtain callIt’s a moment more iconic than any other in the 30-year history of Major League Soccer. Lionel Messi, then 36, standing over a free kick 30 yards from goal, days after completing a shock move to the United States. On that night in the summer of 2023, deep into the dying moments of his US debut, Inter Miami were in need of a miracle.With one brilliant stroke of his left foot, Messi delivered. His game-winning free kick, placed just out of reach of the opposing goalkeeper, was a work of art. It rolled back the years, reminiscent of the brilliance that had by then already solidified his stature as the greatest player in the history of the sport. Those in attendance who weren’t screaming were simply wide-eyed and slack jawed, in disbelief at what they’d seen.To many who were there that night, Messi’s mere presence in Major League Soccer was more surreal than what they’d just witnessed. The Argentina legend was of course a staple in the US by 2023 but he’d largely been kept at arm’s length. He was readily available on television, his genius almost always narrated by Ray Hudson’s hyperbolic prose, and Americans would occasionally visit with Messi in person as well, almost always in the form of a meaningless summer friendly every year or two.Now in the twilight of his career, Messi had shirked other leagues and offers and had come to the US to retire. What has followed has been a complicated yet unquestionably successful two-and-a-half years, with Miami winning their first league championship and solidifying themselves as the standard-bearers in MLS.A funny thing also happened along the way.When Messi joined up with Miami, he was months removed from his crowning achievement – winning the 2022 World Cup – and he’d suggested repeatedly that the tournament would be his final one. Up until that point, the only true, meaningful moment of Messi’s international career Americans had witnessed in person had been his brief retirement from the national team after the 2016 Copa América Centenario, when a tearful Messi broke down to the media after losing the final.Messi, of course, did return to the Albiceleste and offered Americans another chance to watch his magic on the international stage during the 2024 Copa América, which he won. Despite some frustrations, he also enjoyed his club football at Miami and his everyday life in the US tremendously. Slowly, it began to feel more and more possible he’d feature in his sixth World Cup this summer, and American fans began to realize they’d get an entirely unexpected chance to watch the diminutive forward’s international curtain call in person.Messi follows in the footsteps of Pelé, who came to the US in the mid-70s, and David Beckham, who did so three decades later. Unlike those two, Messi only ever came here to play football, not to proselytize the game to the American masses. He’s expanded his commercial footprint here, certainly, but Messi never needed to conquer American club soccer to do so. His face and name alone would have sufficed. His presence here at times feels more like a gift than anything else.Argentina are favored by few to repeat as champions this year, often thrown behind Spain, France and even England, at times, as contenders. He is approaching Miroslav Klose’s all-time World Cup goals record of 16 (Messi has 13) and could log his 200th international cap during the tournament. The appeal of watching Messi win another World Cup feels undeniable. It has little to do with his legacy. Any suggestion that Messi needs to win another title to solidify that feels genuinely farcical.He does feel well equipped to perform this summer, in no small part because his time in MLS has already exposed him to many of the stadiums he’ll play in and, more importantly, because he’s already grown accustomed to the absurdities of traveling thousands of miles between matches, as is frequently the case in the American top flight. He has been at ease in the US, telling reporters last week he is “savoring every moment” of his swan song with Argentina as the end approaches.The US is savoring every moment of Messi’s North American curtain call as well.Messi, put simply, is in extra time at this point, and winning another championship would only solidify his legend. Entirely unburdened, the Argentinian is playing his final World Cup free from the expectations that come with being a precocious wunderkind, in competition for the best player in the world, or a legend of the game looking for one last piece to balance his trophy cabinet. That sort of freedom can liberate and empower a player, but players of Messi’s ilk often need those expectations to continue to perform.How Messi responds this summer remains to be seen, but we will get our first glimpse at him on Tuesday evening in Kansas City, as his US denouement continues.