When Lionel Messi puts on the Argentina national team shirt these days, he turns into a different player. After helping to dominate European champions Italy in the Finalissima on June 1, Messi came out four days later and scored an Argentina team-record five goals against Estonia. He accounted for all his team's goals in a 5-0 win.
Albiceleste supporters only hope Messi can keep up the magic through the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as Argentina now has a 33-match unbeaten streak. Messi has never won the FIFA World Cup, and after picking up his first two trophies with the senior team — the 2021 Copa America and the 2022 Finalissima — he desperately will hope to add the one title glaringly missing from his trophy case.
With the five goals against Estonia, Messi added to his all-time Argentina goal record which is now at 86 goals and counting in 162 appearances (30 more goals than the next highest scorer, Gabriel Batistuta).
In the 120-year history of the Argentina national team only two other players have ever scored five goals in a match. Watch Messi's five goals against Estonia below.
How many times has Messi scored 5 goals?
In addition to the five goals scored on Estonia in front of the crowd in Pamplona's El Sadar stadium in Spain, Messi has scored five goals one other time in his senior career and it came with FC Barcelona.
Ten years prior, Messi scored five in a 2011-12 UEFA Champions League match. They came in a Round of 16 second leg against German side Bayer Leverkusen.
Barcelona ran out 7-1 winners at the Camp Nou, and 10-2 on aggregate. Messi scored seven of Barcelona's 10 goals in that series against the German club.
He would finish as the 2011-12 top scorer in the UEFA Champions League with 14 goals, although Barcelona fell short of winning the tournament, succumbing at the semifinal stage to eventual champion Chelsea.
Argentina goals record in a single match
The most goals scored in a single game by an Argentina player is five, a feat achieved by three forwards in the nation's history: Juan Andres Marvezy, Jose Manuel "Charro" Moreno and Messi.
Marvezy, a Tigre legend, scored five against Ecuador in a 6-1 win in a 1941 tournament that is now known as the Copa America.
The following year Charro Moreno, an Argentina legend, scored his five goals in the same competition in 1942, also against Ecuador in a 12-0 win. That also happens to be the most lopsided win in Argentina national team history.
It took 80 years for the feat to be repeated. This time it was Lionel Messi with his five goals in a friendly against No. 110-ranked Estonia.