Lionel Messi equalled Miroslav Klose’s record of 16 World Cup goals with a hat-trick as Argentina began their title defence with a 3-0 win over Algeria in Kansas City.<\/p>\n
Argentina had started their ultimately successful 2022 campaign with defeat to Saudi Arabia, but avoided any such upset on this occasion thanks to Messi\u2019s first World Cup treble.<\/p>\n
Messi\u2019s second took him level with Brazil great Ronaldo on 15 goals across his six World Cup appearances.<\/p>\n
He was denied in a one-on-one by Algeria goalkeeper Luca Zidane and had a penalty appeal turned down before joining Germany\u2019s Klose in a share of the record.<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old will have chances to move into the outright lead in Argentina\u2019s remaining Group J games against Austria and Jordan next week \u2013 assuming France\u2019s Kylian Mbappe, who is on 14 after a brace against Senegal<\/a>, does not run riot against Iraq on Monday.<\/p>\n Messi thought he had opened the scoring after only five minutes, but was denied by a tight offside call after a composed finish into the bottom corner.<\/p>\n Four minutes later it was Algeria\u2019s turn to be denied \u2013 this time after VAR overruled the original decision when Ibrahim Maza played in Fares Chaibi and he put a low effort past Emi Martinez.<\/p>\n \n It proved to be the only attempt on target a toothless Algeria side \u2013 which surprisingly saw Riyad Mahrez dropped to the bench \u2013 could muster all evening.<\/p>\n Messi opened the scoring after 17 minutes as he linked up with Inter Miami team-mate Rodrigo de Paul and fired a 20-yard effort into the roof of the net.<\/p>\n Chaibi wasted an excellent chance to equalise and, at the other end, Thiago Almada fired over before the break.<\/p>\n Lautaro Martinez shot straight at Algeria goalkeeper Zidane \u2013 the son of France World Cup winner Zinedine \u2013 who also saved well from Alexis Mac Allister on the hour mark, only for Messi to react quickest and turn in the rebound.<\/p>\n Mac Allister\u2019s defence-splitting pass sent Messi clear after 66 minutes, but Zidane was equal to his effort and referee Szymon Marciniak waved away the Inter Miami forward\u2019s penalty claims after Manchester City defender Rayan Ait-Nouri sent him tumbling in the box.<\/p>\n Messi\u2019s moment did finally arrive in the 76th minute as he collected Nicolas Gonzalez\u2019s pass and fired a low effort into the bottom corner.<\/p>\n Messi made way for Nico Paz a short time afterwards to a standing ovation from the Arrowhead Stadium crowd as Argentina comfortably saw out an opening win.<\/p>\n Watch every game of the FIFA 2026 World Cup live on RT\u00c9 with highlights on RT\u00c9 Sport digital platforms and live blogs on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app <\/p>\n \n Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lionel Messi equalled Miroslav Klose’s record of 16 World Cup goals with a hat-trick as Argentina began their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-503747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}