Comparing Lionel Messi’s 2026 World Cup stats with Diego Maradona’s legendary 1986 campaign | OneFootball

For a certain generation, Diego Maradona represents the highest apex a footballer has ever reached at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

Remarkably, Lionel Messi came close just by producing something similar at the 2026 World Cup – a quite frankly bonkers achievement at the age of 39.

Messi has now played as many starts as Maradona did at Mexico 86, giving us a good opportunity to go back and compare their output.

The Argentina captain, of course, didn’t quite deliver the biggest trophy of all this time around. There are parallels to Maradona’s 1990 campaign, in which Argentina were defeated by Germany in the final.

For many, Messi matched Maradona with some unforgettable performances as he helped lead Argentina to their third World Cup in Qatar. But, amazingly enough, his output is actually more even better this time around.

You watch Messi move and he’s clearly on the physical downslope. He doesn’t have anything like the pace and dynamism that he once did. And yet even with his limitations, playing long after most players have retired, he was still deciding games and making a massive impact.

Still, while this Messi is physically incapable of scoring iconic solo goals like Maradona’s ‘Goal of the Century’ run in 1986, he was certainly capable of that in his youth.

Like Maradona in ’86, he’s scored or assisted big goals in every game of the tournament. They’ve both been involved in the vast majority of Argentina’s goals, though Maradona that bit more.

While Maradona scored two of the most famous goals in football history as Argentina beat England 2-1 in the knockout stages, Messi was the provider in this generation’s 2-1 victory over the Three Lions, assisting Enzo Fernandez and Lautaro Martinez, with his cross for the latter in particular an absolute peach.

Maradona notched more assists in 1986, while Messi has scored more goals.

Crucially, of course, Maradona also got his hands on the trophy that year, having set up Jorge Burruchaga’s famous, late match-winner in the final against West Germany. Messi didn’t provide any more magic moments as Spain produced a superb shut-out job.

It’s also worth remembering the context of how much the game has developed in the past 40 years, and still today some of Maradona’s stats are out of this world through any lens.

Maradona drew 53 fouls at the 86 World Cup – over three times as many as Messi in this tournament – and that was when the game was infamously more robust, tougher, and with more lenient refereeing.

The legendary forward also completed over twice as many dribbles as Messi has in this tournament. That’s particularly mindblowing when you consider that Messi leads the dribble charts for every player at the 2026 World Cup.

It’s also fun to consider that football data site SofaScore have gone back and marked players at older World Cups via their statistical algorithm. In an article published before the 2026 tournament, they judged Maradona to be the World Cup GOAT with an average rating of 9.00.

Messi had an average of 9.01 going into the final, although that dipped quite a bit after a quiet game against Spain. His final rating of 8.79 places him as the fourth-best individual campaign in World Cup history, behind Maradona in ’86, Johan Cruyff in 1974 and Eusebio in 1966.

Here’s how Messi’s stats at the 2026 World Cup compare with Diego Maradona’s in 1986.