Lionel Messi has become the leading goalscorer in World Cup history after netting his 17th goal in the competition to open Monday’s meeting with Austria. Messi became the first player in history to feature at six World Cups earlier this summer—later joined at that tally by Cristiano Ronaldo—having played at every tournament since his first in 2006.
Messi downplayed the significance of the record in the aftermath of the Algeria game, insisting it was “just a statistic, nothing more,” while simultaneously acknowledging the importance of sitting in the same bracket as Klose, Ronaldo and Gerd Müller.
Alongside breaking the scoring record, Messi also became the first player in tournament history to score in six consecutive World Cup games, having netted five across four knockout games all the way back in 2022.
I was, for a long time, an advocate of Pele as having been the greatest soccer player of all time. Now, in my defense, this was in 2020, when Messi had yet to win either a World Cup or a Copa America, so there was legitimately a rather glaring gap in his resume, even in comparison with his own fellow Argentine, Diego Maradona, much less Pele. Yes, football is a team sport, but it’s not as if Argentina was a non-competitive team prior to 2020 or that Messi was being forced to carry them singlehandedly.
But in an effort to prove my case for Pele, I went to the statistics. And there I was astounded to discover that not only did Messi rank as one of the top scorers of all time, he also ranked as a top ten assist-provider as well. In fact, statistically, at that time he was essentially the equivalent of BOTH Cristiano Ronaldo AND Zinedine Zidane every single time he walked on the field.
To put this in American football terms, it would be equivalent to Peyton Manning leading the NFL in passing yards and rushing yards, not only for a season, but over his whole career. It’s unthinkable. How do you both a) score more than everyone else and b) help others score more than anyone else? Even Michael Jordan never led the NBA in both scoring and assists. The only real comparison is to Wayne Gretzky, which tends to underline the Messi’s case.
And this was BEFORE he added two Copa America championships and a World Cup championship. And he’s now scored 5 goals in the first two games of the current World Cup Finals with football powerhouse Jordan next on the schedule. At this point, I won’t be surprised if Argentina wins the championship and Messi wins the Golden Boot.
Anyhow, I just thought I should acknowledge that while I have been wrong about things in the past, and I will be wrong about things in the future, I have never, ever, been more wrong than I was when I argued, sincerely, that Messi was not the greatest of all time.