Only when you think Lionel Messi has conquered everything mountain football has to offer, the Argentine master invents a new peak. Hammering home a clinical 29th-minute strike against a resilient Cape Verde side on Saturday, Messi not only ignited Argentina’s path to the last eight as he rewrote the fabric of international football history, becoming the first player to score seven goals in two different editions of football. FIFA World Cup.The talismanic striker, who scored seven goals during Argentina’s fairytale run to Qatar 2022, replicated that exact goal-scoring ferocity in the 2026 edition. His sublime finish under the Miami lights took his current tournament tally to seven, moving him within striking distance of France’s Kylian Mbappé in a fierce Golden Boot race and extending his World Cup career record to 20 goals.No other footballer in the history of the beautiful game, neither Pelé, Diego Maradona nor the modern icons, has managed such an amazing consistency of goals in multiple World Cup tournaments. While most players consider a seven-goal return in a single World Cup a lifetime achievement, Messi has turned the extraordinary into a routine expectation.His performance on Saturday also extended his World Cup record scoring streak to eight consecutive games, showing unparalleled longevity that completely defies his age. Dropping deep to orchestrate the play before making a perfectly timed ghost run into the box, Messi controlled Lisandro MartÃnez’s lofted pass with trademark elegance before dispossessing veteran Cape Verde keeper Vozinha.For more than two decades, Messi has traded miracles, but this latest step cements his status as a full-fledged statistical masterpiece. As the defending champions march into Atlanta to face Egypt on Tuesday, the soccer world looks on in amazement. Argentina may be grinding the results on the pure grain, but with its captain operating at a historic level of lethality, L’Albiceleste is beautiful.
