Messi’s new World Cup record for longest scoring run
The Argentina’s last group stage game vs Jordan (3-1) produced new historical achievements for Lionel Messi.
*Messi became the first player in the World Cup history to have scored in 7 consecutive games (Argentina’s last 4 in the 2022 edition and first 3 in the current one).
He surpassed the record set by Just Fontaine in 1958 (6 games) and repeated in 1970 by Jairzinho.
*Messi remains only co-holder of the record for being scorer of most consecutive goals (6) of his team.
He shares now this record with Eusebio (1966), Paolo Rossi (1982), Oleg Salenko (1994) and Enner Valencia (2018-2022).
His run was broken by Giovani Lo Celso who scored the Argentina’s opening goal vs Jordan, while Messi was not on the pitch.
In the meantime, coming on, Messi was again the only Argentina’s scorer in the period of his playing activity, so his run of consecutive team goals credited to him name while he was playing is still ongoing (7).
*Jordan became the Messi’s 13th victim in World Cups; this is his record he is moving forward with each new game.
(Jürgen Klinsmann, Ronaldo and Miroslav Klose are the next with 10 teams they scored against).
*Messi extended to 19 goals his scoring record in World Cups, with Kylian Mbappé and Miroslav Klose having 16 behind him.
In the history of competition, there was only one other player who also had at some period 3-goal gap in this ranking: Messi’s countryman Guillermo Stabile in 1930-1934.
Stabile had even 4-goal advantage during 20 minutes of the World Cup 1930 final, between 37th minute (when he scored his 8th goal in the edition), and 57th (when Uruguay’s Pedro Cea, his runner-up, scored his 5th).
*Messi became the only player in XXI century to score 6 goals in the group stage of a single edition. Overall in the competition, 4 other players managed to score 6+ goals at this stage:
7 – Sándor Kocsis (Hungary, 1954)
7 – Gerd Müller (Germany, 1970)
6 – Just Fontaine (France, 1958)
6 – Oleg Salenko (Russia, 1994)
*Messi extended to 7 his number of long-range goals in the World Cups. The next is Roberto Rivellino with 5.
*Messi scored his 2nd direct free kick goal at World Cups, following the one vs Nigeria in 2014.
He equalled 5 other players to do so before him (see the table below).
*Messi became just the 3rd player in the World Cup history to score a direct free kick as a substitute, after:
Blerim Džemaili (Switzerland), on 20 June 2014 vs France,
Nathan Saliba (Canada) on 19 June 2026 vs Qatar.
| WORLD CUP | MULTIPLE | FREE KICK GOALS | |
| Player/Country | Dates | Games | |
| 1 | Pelé | 12/07/1966 | Bulgaria 2-0 |
| Brazil | 10/06/1970 | Romania 3-2 | |
| 2 | Roberto Rivellino | 03/06/1970 | Czechoslovakia 4-1 |
| Brazil | 18/06/1974 | East Germany 1-0 | |
| 3 | Téofilo Cubillas | 10/06/1970 | Germany 1-3 |
| Peru | 03/06/1978 | Scotland 3-1 | |
| 4 | Bruno Genghini | 21/06/1982 | Kuwait 4-1 |
| France | 28/06/1982 | Austria 1-0 | |
| 5 | David Beckham | 26/06/1998 | Colombia 2-0 |
| England | 25/06/2006 | Ecuador 1-0 | |
| 6 | Lionel Messi | 25/06/2014 | Nigeria 3-2 |
| Argentina | 28/06/2026 | Jordan 3-1 |