Outright top scorer: Messi alone atop the World Cup rankings | OneFootball

Messi scored his sixth goal at this 2026 World Cup and extended his lead to three over Germany’s Miroslav Klose and France’s Kylian Mbappé. In addition, the Argentine star set a new record by scoring in seven consecutive World Cup matches.

The all-time World Cup top scorers list shows that they are both at the top:

From a free kick, Messi scored Argentina’s third against Jordan

In the World Cup opener, he had scored three goals against Algeria: first with a left-footed strike from outside the box, then by tapping in the ball after a rebound, and the third with his trademark shot from the edge of the area. With that hat trick, the number 10 moved past Mbappé himself and Gerd Müller, and had drawn level with the German who lifted the trophy in Brazil 2014.

“It’s an honor to be there because of what it means to be alongside Klose, Ronaldo is there too, but I don’t think it means anything, Mbappé is there too and he scored two today. It’s just a statistic and nothing more. While it is a source of pride to be able to compete with all of them, it doesn’t mean anything to me. Ronaldo, from what I saw, was one of the greatest and he’s not first, so in the end it’s all just a statistic,” he said in the mixed zone, downplaying the achievement a bit.

For his part, Klose reached 16 goals across the four World Cups he played in. The German scored five goals in 2002, five in 2006, four in 2010 and two in 2014.

Behind him, until before the start of the match between Argentina and Algeria, was Ronaldo Nazário, with 15 goals spread across 1998, 2002 and 2006, since in 1994 he was part of Brazil’s title-winning squad but did not play any minutes.

However, Messi needed just one match in this edition to catch the historic German striker born in Poland, and a second to surpass him, even though he missed a penalty early in the match against Austria.

Mbappé is another of the main candidates to reach that mark. The Frenchman has 16 goals in just three FIFA World Cups: he scored four in Russia 2018, eight in Qatar 2022, and already has four in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

On the other hand, with the brace against Austria and the three he had scored against Algeria, Messi has now scored in seven consecutive World Cup matches. In doing so, he broke the all-time record held by Just Fontaine (Sweden 1958) and Jairzinho (Mexico 1970). :

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.