"I love playing football, and I'm going to do it until I can't anymore." Lionel Messi said that recently, and at 38 years old — turning 39 this month — he is about to prove it on the biggest stage available.
Messi is set to become the first man in history to play in six World Cup tournaments. If he takes the field against Algeria in Kansas City on Tuesday, as expected, he'll also become just the third player to earn 200 international caps, behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Kuwait's Bader Al-Mutawa. Both records in the same week. That's not a career winding down — that's a career refusing to.
He said Qatar was the end. He lied (in the best possible way)
After Argentina beat France in that 2022 final — seven Messi goals across the tournament, two in the final alone — he was unambiguous. "Obviously, I wanted to finish my career with this. I can't ask for any more." Most people believed him. He'd won everything. He was 35. The story had its ending.
Then he kept going. Joined Inter Miami. Won the Copa America in 2024. Finished as top scorer in South American World Cup qualifying. Put up 13 goals in 16 games in 2026. The man who supposedly had nothing left to prove kept finding reasons to prove things.
The hamstring scare last month — he came off in Miami's 6-4 win over Philadelphia — briefly made this feel fragile. But he answered with a penalty goal in a 20-minute cameo against Iceland last week, Argentina winning 3-0. Fitness questions shelved, for now.
What Messi's presence actually means for Argentina's odds
Argentina are chasing something no nation has managed since Brazil in 1962: back-to-back World Cup titles. That's not a soft ask. The defending champions carry a target, and the pressure of expectation is a weight of its own.
The honest caveat is this: Messi is no longer the player who tormented Europe's best every week. MLS is a different animal from the Champions League. His touch, his decision-making, his set-piece delivery — those remain elite. But the engine runs differently now, and Scaloni will need to manage his minutes carefully through a long tournament if Argentina are to go deep.
Still, Argentina's World Cup odds rest heavily on what he produces. When Messi is available and on form, they are a different team. Julian Alvarez put it plainly: "He's the best player of all time. He's made a colossal impact the world over." That's not flattery from a teammate. That's an accurate description of what he adds to every game he enters.
Ronaldo, for his part, is also heading into his sixth World Cup — the rivalry that defined a generation of football ending, fittingly, in the same tournament, on the same stage, one final time.
