Lionel Messi responds to Mbappe and co with records-shattering hat-trick against Algeria

Anything Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland can do, Lionel Messi can do better.

But frankly, anything any footballer who ever lived can do, Lionel Messi can do better.

We weren’t really sure what to expect from Messi at this World Cup. He scaled his Everest four years ago in Qatar, finally landing the game’s biggest prize to settle the debate at least regarding the two modern greats.

With Messi no longer playing real club football, there was no meaningful way of knowing quite what level his game was at. Turns out he really might still be the best player in the world. Not just the best to ever play the game, but still the best right now, at almost 39 years of age.

He had already become the oldest player to score a World Cup brace before then becoming the oldest player to score a World Cup hat-trick in an ultimately facile 3-0 win over Algeria for the holders.

This was the archetype of a modern Argentina World Cup performance. Rock-solid absolutely everywhere else on the pitch, with Messi’s magic the ultimate point of difference.

He showed his full range as well. The first goal lashed home from long range, not quite as spectacularly as first hoped with replays showing Luca Zidane had rather flapped it into the top corner from a fairly central starting point.

The second goal perhaps best showed how sharp the skills remain. His touch and pass early in the move created the chance that Alexis Mac Allister fizzed on goal from just outside the box. And it was then Messi, the oldest man on the pitch, who reacted quickest when Zidane spilled the shot.

It’s not the first or most serious occasion on which a member of the Zidane family has had a day to forget at the World Cup, but there were sizeable assists from the young keeper for both those goals.

But nothing he could do about the third, a classic curling left-footed shot into the bottom corner from 20 yards. A goal that you can close your eyes and instantly picture perfectly, so often have you seen Messi score that precise goal for Barcelona, for PSG, for Inter Miami and for Argentina.

His first World Cup hat-trick ticks off one of the vanishingly few side quests left for Messi to achieve in the game, while also taking him level at the very top of the all-time World Cup goal charts. He moved above both the Original Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappe to sit level now with Miroslav Klose on 16.

And the fact he responded to Mbappe’s earlier brace tells you something more about the competitive instinct that burns still within a man none could have blamed had they decided 2022 was enough to crown and conclude his international career.

A spectacular night watching Mbappe throw down the gauntlet and Haaland and Messi respond is rendered only more magnificent still by the thought of just how many shots a wounded and rattled Ronaldo will balloon into the Houston stands as he desperately tries to summon a response of his own before Harry Kane does so by scoring at least two penalties against Croatia.

But for all that, and for all Argentina’s all-round excellence, this was a night that belonged to one man.

Winning his 200th cap at his sixth World Cup and scoring his first hat-trick on the biggest stage to go level with the all-time leading World Cup goalscorer is an absurd tally of records to tick off in a single night.

And it leaves Argentina firmly in contention to set a record of their own, one only Italy and Brazil and absolutely nobody for 64 years can match, and retain the World Cup.

We thought France and Mbappe would take some stopping after their win over Senegal. They were the team to beat for a whole six hours.

Mbappe is extraordinary, Haaland is inevitable, but Messi is Messi. He could be about to write the most astonishing chapter yet in the greatest career of them all.