Sunday, December 4, 2022 – 2:47 PM
From Ahmed Zahran.
ABU DHABI, 4th December, 2020 (WAM) — The famous Argentine soccer star, Lionel Messi, has confirmed – with reaching the 1,000-game mark in his professional career full of achievements, tournaments and records.. that he still has the ability to make a difference and that his records do not stop there.
And Messi celebrated yesterday evening, Saturday, his 1000th match since the start of his career as a professional player in 2004 until now, and the player left more than one important imprint in this match, and during this match he came close to breaking more than one record that remained steadfast for long periods.
Messi scored a goal to lead his country to a 2-1 victory over his Australian counterpart in the second round (round of 16) of the World Cup, to pass the team to the quarter-finals, in which the Dutch team will meet in a match that will bring back memories of the confrontation between the two teams in the 1978 World Cup final in Argentina when the owners won Land on the Dutch battalion.
Messi raised his score with this goal to 3 goals, to enter the top scorer race in the current version with 5 players, one of whom actually left the championship, which is the Ecuadorian Ener Valencia.
Yesterday’s goal was of great importance to Messi, who is the ninth player in the World Cup tournaments, as he crossed the balance of the late legend Diego Maradona and Guillermo Stabile, who each scored 8 goals for Argentina in the World Cup tournaments.
And after 8 consecutive goals in the group stage, Messi scored yesterday his first goal in the World Cup knockout rounds.
Messi also became, with this, only one goal away from Gabriel Batistuta, Argentina’s all-time top scorer in the World Cup, with 10 goals.
But this record is not the only one that Messi has come close to achieving; The famous player raised his score to 23 matches in the World Cup tournaments, to consolidate his record as the most participating Argentine player in the World Cup, after Maradona’s score exceeded “21 matches” during the current version, after the late star carried this number for decades.
Messi equalized the balance of the Italian Paolo Maldini, and he could equal the balance of the German Miroslav Klose, “24 matches,” if he played, as is likely, the team’s match against the Netherlands in the quarter-finals.
And if Messi with the Argentine national team passes the Dutch hurdle to the semi-finals, he will have the opportunity to achieve a historical record by playing the remaining two matches for his team in the current World Cup, whether he reaches the final or the third-place match, and through them Messi can break the number of German legend Lothar Matthaus, the most participating player in the matches. Throughout history, with 25 matches, Messi will have 26 matches at that time.
Over the course of his 1,000 matches in the professional world, Messi played 778 matches with his former team, Barcelona, with whom he crowned 35 championship titles, and 53 with his current team, Paris Saint-Germain, while his match yesterday evening was his 169th with the Argentine national team.
Abdel Nasser Moneim / Ahmed Zahran