Lionel Messi scored all three goals in Argentina’s 3-0 win over Algeria, reaching 16 career World Cup goals and giving the holders a direct start to their title defense.
Argentina’s World Cup 2026 roster was built around a difficult balance. Lionel Scaloni had to protect enough of the team that won in Qatar while making room for a tournament that asks more minutes, more travel and more recovery from every contender. Against Algeria in Kansas City, the balance held because Messi made the opening night simple.
Argentina won 3-0. Messi scored in the 17th, 60th, and 76th minutes. By the end of it, he had reached 16 career World Cup goals, level with Miroslav Klose at the top of the men’s tournament scoring list. It was his first World Cup hat trick, his 200th appearance for Argentina and his first match in a record sixth men’s World Cup.
The first goal came after an unsettled opening. Messi had already put the ball in the net inside five minutes, only for the finish to be ruled out for offside. Algeria had its own early moment wiped away when Farès Chaïbi’s effort was also overturned. Then Rodrigo De Paul found Messi between the lines, and Messi drove forward before beating Luca Zidane, Algeria’s goalkeeper and the son of Zinedine Zidane.
That name gave the night a strange echo. Zidane’s 2006 World Cup belongs to the same football memory as Messi’s first appearance in the tournament. Twenty years later, Messi was still here, still shaping games at the same stage, only now with Zinedine’s son in the opposite goal and Klose’s record in sight.
His second goal was less clean but just as decisive. Alexis Mac Allister’s low strike was not held, and Messi was quickest to the loose ball. The third came from a pass by Nico González, followed by the kind of left-footed finish that made the record feel less like a chase than a ledger being updated.
A record night with a longer memory
There is a necessary distinction in World Cup history. Messi is obviously not the first footballer to score a hat trick at the tournament. Bert Patenaude did that for the United States in 1930. Messi’s record was different, but no less rare. He became the oldest player to score a hat trick at the men’s World Cup, and he did it at an age when most tournament careers are already fixed in the past tense.
The date gave the performance its sharper outline. Messi’s first World Cup goal came on June 16, 2006, against Serbia and Montenegro. On June 16, 2026, exactly 20 years later, he used the same competition to tie its most durable scoring mark. The symmetry matters because it says something more precise than longevity. This was not a ceremonial appearance. It was production.
For Argentina’s World Cup picture, the result carries immediate value. Their 2018 tournament began with a draw against Iceland. Their 2022 title run began with a loss to Saudi Arabia. This time, there was no early repair job. Algeria had moments, but Argentina moved through the second half with control and left Group J with three points before matches against Austria and Jordan.
The win does not settle the entire tournament. Argentina are chasing the first men’s World Cup repeat since Brazil in 1962, and one opening result cannot answer questions about depth, fatigue or how Scaloni manages Messi across an expanded format. It can, however, remove uncertainty from the first step. That matters in a competition where one bad opening night can change the shape of everything after it.
Messi’s night didn’t need prophecy. It had numbers. Three goals. One win. Two decades between his first World Cup goal and his first World Cup hat trick. Six men’s World Cups. Two hundred Argentina caps. Sixteen World Cup goals. Klose still shares the top line, for now.
