Lionel Messi is now out on his own as the top goalscorer in World Cup history, after he found the net twice in Argentina’s 2-0 win over Austria in Dallas.

Messi missed an early penalty for Argentina, but strikes in either half moved him to 18 goals at the World Cup, two clear of previous record holder Miroslav Klose.

Kylian Mbappe is hot on his heels, after he scored twice in France’s 3-0 victory over Iraq, the second half of which was delayed by two hours and 11 minutes after lightning and a fierce rain storm in Philadelphia.

Erling Haaland bagged two goals as Norway survived a late scare to beat Senegal 3-2. Marcus Pedersen netted Norway’s other goal, but they were made to sweat in the closing stages after Ismaila Sarr scored his second of the game in added time.

In the final match of the day, in Argentina’s Group J, Algeria came from behind to beat Jordan 2-1 in Santa Clara.

Get free access to the most comprehensive World Cup coverage in The Athletic app

Can Messi lift the one thing he hasn’t won yet?

The honours section on Messi’s Wikipedia page is about the length of a short novel.

He’s won pretty much everything there is to win: domestic titles in all three leagues he’s played in, four Champions Leagues, three Club World Cups, one World Cup, two Copas America, six Ballons d’Or, two World Cup Golden Balls and a chunky list of other slightly less prestigious titles.

Pretty much the only thing he doesn’t have yet is a World Cup Golden Boot. But that could be about to change.

Lionel Messi has scored all of Argentina’s five goals at the tournament (Charlotte Wilson/Getty Images)

Messi’s two goals in the 2-0 win over Austria put him on five for the tournament, after his hat-trick against Algeria. That would have been enough to win the Golden Boot at four previous World Cups, and he’s only played two games.

With at least two, potentially six more games to go, the 38-year-old is well on track to be the first player to reach double figures at a World Cup since West Germany’s Gerd Muller in 1970.

He’s the first Golden Boot winner to reach five goals after two games since Just Fontaine, of France, in 1958, and only the second man to score his country’s first five goals at a World Cup, after Russia’s Oleg Salenko in 1994.

And yet, this one isn’t in the bag, because of Haaland and Mbappe, who helped themselves to their second doubles of the tournament and are one behind Messi.

The race for the Golden Boot is not only shaping up to be a classic, but a fantastic tussle between the biggest stars in the game. What more could we ask for.

Could free-flowing France reach their third straight final?

While Messi has been the standout player at the tournament, the standout team has been France.

Not just because they’ve won both of their games at a relative canter, but because they have looked, at times, devastating in attack.

This is in sharp contrast to their performances two years ago at Euro 2024, when they somehow contrived to make a team featuring Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele, Antoine Griezmann and an array of other fine attacking talents look stodgy and boring. They heaved their way to the semi-finals without managing a goal from open play, scoring only from penalties and own-goals.

Now though, they look much freer, much more positive, much less constricted. They have discovered a way of fitting together their brilliant forwards, adding Michael Olise and a more developed Desire Doue to their arsenal.

Five of their six goals have involved some combination of Mbappe, Dembele and Olise, the other scored by Bradley Barcola, shortly after coming on against Senegal. They have had most of these options before, but now the jigsaw pieces seem to be slotting together beautifully. Perhaps it is the astonishing Olise, now among the top five best players in the world, a remarkable rise considering only five years ago he was playing for Reading in the English second tier.

Ousmane Dembele celebrates his goal against Iraq (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Perhaps Didier Deschamps has taken the handbrake off, allowing them more freedom. Perhaps not even his cautious approach can shackle the brilliance of this squad.

Whatever it is, their next opponents are impressed. “Honestly I don’t care too much (about the France game),” Haaland told Fox Sports after Norway’s win over Senegal. “They’re probably going to win against us, they’re probably going to win the whole tournament.”

There remains a slight scepticism about Deschamps among some, a sense that he isn’t actually a great coach, and has just been lucky enough to have the job when some of the greatest players in his nation’s history have been at or near their peaks.

But if he takes them to their third World Cup final in a row, something never before achieved by a single coach (West Germany reached three consecutive finals in 1982, 1986 and 1990, but under two different coaches), then surely even the doubters will have to concede he is one of the greatest in World Cup history.

Is the weather the only thing that can spoil this World Cup?

Well, not the only thing.

The prices, the vast distances fans have to cover, the hijacking of the tournament by malign political forces, the environmental damage that all of this travel is causing… there is plenty to take the edge off the primal joy that the football has given us.

But the extreme conditions are undoubtedly a complicating factor.

The rain began towards the end of the first half of France vs Iraq, and quickly turned torrential, causing fans to scurry for cover in the open stadium in Philadelphia, and Deschamps’s nice suit to double in weight from the water it took on.

Then after nearby lightning strikes, the second half was delayed by two hours and 11 minutes. You could have squeezed another whole game into that time, including hydration breaks. At some points during that long delay, you wondered whether the game was going to restart at all.

Eventually it did, and the second half passed relatively normally, despite some standing water on the pitch in the early stages, which will have done nothing for the surface’s reputation.

Kylian Mbappe races through the rain in Philadelphia (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

There could be more disruption on Tuesday, with poor weather forecast for the north-east of America, where England play Ghana in Boston, then again in Miami on Wednesday and Philadelphia on Thursday.

It turned out OK in France’s game, but imagine if the final, to be held in New Jersey on July 19, is disrupted. It would, in a literal and metaphorical sense, cast a cloud over what has been and will hopefully continue to be a magnificent tournament.

What to know about Tuesday’s games

It’s been quite a week for Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal, having to deal with the fallout from their lacklustre performance in drawing with DR Congo, fallout that has spilled over into an unfortunate social media furore and tense relations between the team and the nation’s media.

They face Uzbekistan in Houston, with a chance to kickstart their campaign. If they don’t win this one, then things could really get messy.

England were really impressive in the second half of their 4-2 win over Croatia, and will now face Ghana — who started by beating Panama — in their second game, in Boston.

The other game in Group L takes place between the two teams that lost their openers, Panama and Croatia. Assuming he starts — which actually isn’t a given considering he only lasted an hour against England — then this will be Luka Modric’s 200th appearance for his country.

Finally, in Guadalajara, one of the tournament’s many good news stories, DR Congo, take on Colombia, who are fresh from a reasonably comfortable 3-1 win over Uzbekistan.

Day 13 schedule:

Group K: Portugal v Uzbekistan, 1pm ET (6pm BST)
Group L: England v Ghana, 4pm ET (9pm BST)
Group L: Panama v Croatia, 7pm ET (12am BST)
Group K: Colombia v DR Congo, 10pm ET (3am BST)

With his two goals against Austria on Monday, Lionel Messi has now scored more times at a World Cup than any other player.

The first was 20 years ago as a substitute in a 6-0 win against Serbia and Montenegro in Germany. He failed to score in the 2010 World Cup, before hitting four in 2014 in Brazil.

Four years later in Russia, he found the net just once from 18 shots at goal. Then, in 2022, his seven goals, including two in the final against France, powered Argentina to World Cup glory.

Already in this tournament, he has five goals in two matches, after following up his hat-trick in the first game against Algeria with a brace of goals against Austria.

With 18 to choose from, against 12 different opponents, we asked a bunch of our writers to pick their favourite World Cup goal by Messi.

2014 World Cup: Bosnia and Herzegovina, group stage

It seems incredible now, but Lionel Messi went into the 2014 World Cup with major question marks hanging over his international record.

His tally of 37 goals in 83 senior appearances for Argentina would have been good going for a mere mortal, but with Messi having scored a frankly God-like 91 times for Barcelona in 2012, the Argentine media and public could have been forgiven for expecting more.

Not least as, at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Messi had failed to score in any of Argentina’s five matches (a fact compounded by his failure to score in a home Copa America the following year).

The many thousands of Argentines who made the trip to Brazil always had faith. Their anthem that summer, to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising”, not only reminded any listening Brazilian of their defeat to Argentina at the 1990 World Cup, and hammered home their view that Diego Maradona was better than Pelé, it also proclaimed: “You are going to see Messi, We are going to take the Cup.”

Still, when Messi walked out onto the pitch at the iconic Maracana stadium for Argentina’s first match of those finals against Bosnia and Herzegovina, he did so with a World Cup record of eight played, one scored.

So as he gained possession near the centre circle, exchanged passes with Gonzalo Higuain, dropped a shoulder to send two Bosnian defenders careering into one another, and slapped the ball left-footed into the bottom corner from 20 yards, Messi wasn’t just kick-starting Argentina’s campaign in Brazil, he was finally establishing international football — and the World Cup in particular — as his stage.

James Maw

(Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)

2018 World Cup: Nigeria, group stage

A wide-eyed Diego Maradona was watching on from high. Jorge Sampaoli, Argentina’s coach, was self-combusting on the sideline. Argentina were dysfunctional and doomed. But for a couple of seconds, inside Messi’s bubble, all was beauty.

The pass, from Ever Banega, was gorgeous, but Messi still had an incredible amount to do. The ball was dropping over his shoulder. He was already running at full tilt. Nigeria defender Kenneth Omeruo looked to be in the perfect position, there to pounce on Messi’s touch if it was anything less than perfect. 

It wasn’t. Messi welcomed the ball into his run, cushioning it with his thigh and then — sublimely, almost in slow motion — nudging it ahead with his left foot. By the time it touched the ground, Omeruo was irrelevant, grasping at fresh air.

The finish was emphatic, the perfect conclusion to a miniature masterpiece. 

Jack Lang

2022 World Cup: Mexico, group stage

The World Cup in Qatar was supposed to be Lionel Messi’s last. When Argentina lost the opening game to Saudi Arabia in a smaller, less forgiving format, the stakes could not have been higher. I still remember Messi coming through the mixed zone in Lusail. He said they were muertos. Dead.

It made people think Messi was destined never to win the World Cup. The hysteria was palpable. When they played Mexico in their next game, an hour went by, and it was still 0-0. Lionel Scaloni tried everything. He began making the changes that would set Argentina on the way to victory, introducing Enzo Fernandez, then Julian Alvarez. 

But before they could have any effect, Messi stepped up. He appeared on the edge of the box, and boom. Instead of leaping out of the dugout, Scaloni’s assistant Pablo Aimar slumped in his chair, head in his hands. When he revealed his face, the anguish and the relief were unforgettable. Messi, meanwhile, was running to the Argentina fans as if carried by a surge of electricity. 

(Markus Gilliar – GES Sportfoto/Getty Images)

As this list attests, he has arguably scored a couple of better goals in his World Cup career. But the weight and significance of this one made it very memorable, as it kept his World Cup dream alive. Messi and his teammates were muertos no longer. 

James Horncastle

2022 World Cup: Australia, round of 16

I’ll choose the other goal in Qatar, which calmed the nation’s collective nerves.

There have been better ones off that magical left boot, of course, but as with the strike against Mexico, few have meant as much. Against Australia in the last 16, Argentina were again labouring when faced with an inferior opponent, digging in and determined to spoil their World Cup dreams.

Enter Messi, from that inside-right channel where he has spent so much of his storied career, firing a pass into Alexis Mac Allister before picking up Nicolas Otamendi’s lay-off in the box and instinctively finding the bottom corner to break the deadlock and put Argentina ahead.

(Glyn KIRK / AFP via Getty Images)

When you look up ‘Messi goal’ hundreds look just like it — the vision, the movement, the touch, the finish — but on the road to what would be his greatest achievement of all, it was as memorable as any.

Ben Burrows

2022 World Cup: France, final

His second goal against France isn’t the most beautiful goal Messi has ever scored at a World Cup.

In fact, it might be the ugliest, a scruffy rebound shot that didn’t even have the aesthetic value of hitting the back of the net. But there are scruffy rebounds and scruffy rebounds: ones that put your team ahead in extra time of the World Cup final carry rather more importance than any others. 

Especially when a player’s talent has never been questioned, but his legacy would be defined by whether he won the biggest team prize, to go along with all the individual and club ones.

This wasn’t the winner, but it was his second in a winning World Cup final. Nobody could question him after that. 

Nick Miller

2014 World Cup: Iran, group stage

In the summer of 2014, I briefly found myself an Iran supporter. They’d been considered the rank outsiders going into the World Cup. I wrote an article that essentially said: look, they don’t have that much individual talent, but they’re well-organised, they probably won’t lose matches 5-0, and might cause Argentina more problems than everyone expects. To my surprise, this went semi-viral in Iran and one day I woke up with 10,000 extra followers on Twitter.

Therefore, I was really relying on Iran to make me not look stupid. And, thankfully, for 90 minutes, they put in a genuinely superb performance: good last-ditch defending, the odd counter-attack, everything you could wish for to create an unlikely underdog success story. A 0-0 draw against Argentina would have been one of the best results in their history.

And then … The thing is, Iran didn’t even do anything wrong. They didn’t give Messi that much space. He collected the ball in an inside-right position, dropped his shoulder — but was still in quite a tight spot — and curled the ball into the far corner from 25 yards. Iran did everything they possibly could to stop him, and yet he still found a way.

(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

“We have a genius who is called Messi, and fortunately, he is Argentine,” said Argentina manager Alejandro Sabella afterward. “Iran made life hard for us, but with Messi, everything is possible.”

Michael Cox

2026 World Cup: Austria, group stage

Just totted up and I’ve realised I have been lucky enough to witness no fewer than 10 of his World Cup goals, from the first, as an 18-year-old substitute against Serbia and Montenegro in Gelsenkirchen in 2006, to the 2022 final in Qatar, to this afternoon’s brace in Dallas a couple of days before he turns 39.

I just loved the goal that broke the record. It was classic Messi: that typically adroit turn and pass in the build-up and then, after great work from Thiago Almada and Facundo Medina in the build-up, a wonderfully precise first-time shot to wrong-foot Austria goalkeeper Alexander Schlager.

Beyond that, there was the instinctive timing to make sure he arrived in the right place at precisely the right time. Perfect.

Oliver Kay

2014 World Cup: Nigeria, group stage

The other great World Cup goal he scored against Nigeria.

I’m sticking up for this one because it was the culmination of, perhaps, the finest group stage performance in the competition’s history — at least in terms of quality of goals scored by a single player. 

In 2014, Messi began with that famously outrageous winner against Bosnia, arguably bettered it against Iran a few days later, with a splendid winner in stoppage time.

Then, to secure his country’s passage into the next round, he scored twice against Nigeria in Porto Alegre, the second of which was a gorgeous dipping free kick that buckled Vincent Enyeama’s knees and found the top corner.

A work of art. 

Seb Stafford-Bloor

(PEDRO UGARTE / AFP via Getty Images)