Lionel Messi became the all-time leading scorer in men’s World Cup history on Monday, netting his 17th tournament \u200bgoal during Argentina’s match against Austria to surpass Germany \u200cstriker Miroslav Klose.<\/p>\n
The Argentina captain moved level with Brazilian great Marta, whose 17 goals in the women’s tournament had stood as the overall \u200bWorld Cup record, by scoring his fourth goal of \u200bthe 2026 edition.<\/p>\n
The strike extended Messi’s scoring streak to \u2060six consecutive World Cup matches.<\/p>\n
He opened the tournament with \u200ba hat-trick against Algeria when he became the oldest player, at \u200b38, to score three goals in a World Cup game and the first to appear at six editions of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Messi crowned a flowing \u200bArgentina move in Dallas, starting the attack before arriving unmarked \u200bin the penalty area to sweep a first-time finish into the bottom \u200ccorner \u2060from Facundo Medina’s low cross.<\/p>\n
The Argentine talisman, who turns 39 later this week, had earlier missed a golden opportunity when he sent a penalty wide after Lautaro Martinez was fouled.
\nThe goal \u200bsparked celebrations among \u200ba sea \u2060of Argentina shirts in Dallas, with chants of Messi’s name echoing around the stadium as, four \u200bdecades after Diego Maradona’s iconic exploits, Argentina’s latest \u200bnumber \u206010 continued to build his own World Cup legacy.<\/p>\n
The goal put Argentina ahead in their second Group J match as the \u2060South American \u200bside sought to secure a place \u200bin the knockout stage after opening their campaign with a 3-0 victory over \u200bAlgeria.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":37341,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-37767","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Messi crowned a flowing \u200bArgentina move in Dallas","published_date":"","news_description":"Messi crowned a flowing \u200bArgentina move in Dallas","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37768,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/37767\/revisions\/37768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=37767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}