Messi surpasses Maradona in World Cup goals

Messi celebrates Argentina's first goal.KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV (AFP)

Ten games and 791 minutes led Lionel Messi to debut as a scorer in a World Cup qualifying match.

In his previous appointments (2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018), he had only scored four assists in these rounds.

There was no shortage of people in all this time who reminded him of the fact every time Argentina packed their bags back home.

But since he had to jump over the wall, La Pulga did not choose badly: the night that added his 1,000th match in senior football (778 with Barcelona, ​​53 with PSG and 169 with the national team) and that, almost nothing, helped him to surpass the eight World Cup goals scored by Diego Armando Maradona.

Playful even in the final breath of the Australian arreón, he ended up acclaimed by the masses.

In the middle of a wasteland, after half an hour of the clash, Alexis Mac Allister filtered a pass inside the area, Otamendi gave it to him short to

and he slipped it between a crowd of legs to the right post of Mathew Ryan, the former of the Royal Society.

A classic of his team and a form of self-tribute: thus, for example, with a similar cut, he debuted with his country in a friendly against Croatia in 2006.

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Until then, in the Ahmed Bin Ali stadium, the best thing to do was look at the stands, at the albiceleste party, pure enthusiasm, because down below only time passed.

Lionel Scaloni's windshield boys' football and the army of Australian defenders were leading to yawns.

The goal, in addition to breaking Messi's personal barrier, left other connections with history: surpassed El Pelusa, ahead of him in the table of Argentine scorers in the World Cups, only Gabriel Batistuta (10) remains.

This was his 94th goal and his third in Qatar.

The night fueled the albiceleste hopes that Messi is fine, very loose on the field against the

, trying his old slaloms, comfortable with the dressing room and without major external interference beyond the general anguish unleashed after the initial skid against Saudi Arabia.

"The union that there is is the one that must always be in the national team," he claimed in the press room, where he appeared as "man of the match."

Scaloni's caution

The goal came practically out of nowhere (and what happened afterwards) validated one of Scaloni's programmatic pillars on a day in which he feared the physical power of his rival and the resistance of his team: caution.

Before packing their bags for the Gulf, the Pujato coach had insisted that "the World Cups are won by cautious teams, those who know when to attack and when to defend."

Argentina did something of this when, as was expected after the Polish experience, they initially found an opponent who did not hide their only intention to protect themselves as long as the result allowed.

Without more football this time from the start than the nuclear button of

, their players deployed with the utmost care, like someone stepping on a field of eggs, even boredom,

, waiting for Messi to do his thing.

If any proof was missing that, without a spark, prudence was not going to be negotiated, at the beginning of the second half, Scaloni removed an attacker (Papu Gómez, gray again) and took out a central defender (Lisandro Martínez).

The disappearance of that viscous and panic atmosphere that surrounded the Albicelestes after the Arab trigger also rowed in his favor in this match scenario.

With an advantage and another central defender, the only thing left to do was wait for Australia to shoot themselves in the foot.

Goalkeeper Ryan did as he faced pressure from De Paul.

Julián Álvarez, another who shoots up, scored his second goal in the tournament.

The 2-0 before Argentina received the last signal to continue installing prudence: the Australian goal came from a rebound in Enzo Fernández and two quite clear final chances that almost caused an astonishing tie.

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