Lionel Messi breaks World Cup scoring record with his 17th and 18th goals in Argentina win

Li­onel Mes­si broke the World Cup scor­ing record with his 17th goal and then added an 18th in stop­page time in de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Ar­genti­na’s 2-0 win over Aus­tria on Mon­day.

The record goal came in the 38th minute and two days be­fore Mes­si’s 39th birth­day, and amid the con­cern of an ail­ing fa­ther back at home. It was the sixth con­sec­u­tive World Cup game in which Mes­si has scored — join­ing France strik­er Just Fontaine and Brazil great Jairz­in­ho as on­ly play­ers to do so.

Mes­si had equaled Ger­many strik­er Miroslav Klose for the most goals in the World Cup at 16 with his first hat trick at the tour­na­ment in Ar­genti­na’s 3-0 win over Al­ge­ria in the Group J open­er last Tues­day night in Kansas City.

He first had a chance to set the record in the ninth minute against Aus­tria on Mon­day, but he missed a penal­ty kick.

Ar­genti­na ad­vanced to the knock­out round by win­ning its first two group games, with Mes­si scor­ing all five of the team’s goals so far in his sixth World Cup.

Mes­si added his 18th World Cup goal in stop­page time when he shot one through sev­er­al de­fend­ers af­ter the first at­tempt was turned away by goal­keep­er Alexan­der Schlager.

In the first half, the record be­came Mes­si’s alone when he caught Schlager lean­ing the wrong way af­ter Thi­a­go Al­ma­da let Fa­cuno Med­i­na’s pass go by him and di­rect­ly on­to the Ar­genti­na cap­tain’s left foot from about 20 yards.

As the ball went in­to the net, Mes­si ran to­ward a cor­ner and thrust his right arm in­to the air to cel­e­brate the mark with the de­cid­ed­ly pro-Ar­genti­na crowd among the 70,649 fans in the sold-out home of the NFL’s Dal­las Cow­boys.

There had been a gasp from those same fans when Mes­si missed the penal­ty kick in the ninth minute.

His left-foot­ed at­tempt went just wide of the right post. He is now 4 of 7 on penal­ty kicks in reg­u­la­tion play at the World Cup with miss­es in three con­sec­u­tive tour­na­ments.

Klose scored his 16 goals while play­ing in 24 World Cup match­es for Ger­many, which wrapped up his fourth tour­na­ment by win­ning the 2014 fi­nal 1-0 in ex­tra time over Mes­si and Ar­genti­na.

In an in­ter­view pub­lished on June 12, Klose said he ex­pect­ed Mes­si to break the scor­ing record.

“I ex­pect my record to fall in this tour­na­ment,” Klose told Ger­man news­pa­per Sued­deutsche Zeitung. “With the larg­er field of com­pet­ing teams there are more games and so more chances to score goals. And I as­sume Ar­genti­na and France will go far. That’s per­fect­ly OK, the record will be bro­ken even­tu­al­ly any­how and Mes­si is wel­come to be the one who does it. I’m a big fan of Mes­si, al­ways have been. Mes­si is a ge­nius.”

Mes­si’s hat trick in the pre­vi­ous game, in his 200th in­ter­na­tion­al ap­pear­ance, came 20 years to the date of his World Cup de­but in Ger­many, when he al­so scored. Mon­day was his FI­FA-record 28th match in the tour­na­ment.

The penal­ty kick came af­ter Lau­taro Mar­tinez was run­ning free in the box and was tack­led from be­hind by Xaver Schlager and Ste­fan Posch, the de­fend­er play­ing with a bro­ken jaw. Schal­ger got a foot on the ball, but Posch drew the penal­ty be­cause he did not touch the ball as Mar­tinez tum­bled to the ground.

Play con­tin­ued for more than a minute with Mar­tinez still on the ground near the goal. When the game was stopped for him, of­fi­cials re­viewed the play.

Mes­si’s fa­ther has been un­der­go­ing med­ical treat­ment for an undis­closed ill­ness, the fam­i­ly said in a state­ment last week while not pro­vid­ing any specifics. The 68-year-old Jorge Mes­si has played a key role in his third son’s soc­cer ca­reer, act­ing as his agent and man­ag­ing his busi­ness af­fairs off the field.

Li­onel Mes­si was over­come with emo­tion af­ter scor­ing his first goal against Al­ge­ria, and said af­ter that match his tears came fol­low­ing some tough days not re­lat­ed to soc­cer.