The Argentina captain set up the opening goal in a 3–1 win.
quarterfinal victory over Switzerland on Saturday, but he still managed to set a record—becoming the competition’s all-time leading assist provider. That tally moves the Argentina captain ahead West Germany star Fritz Walter, who has nine.
Brazilian great Pelé is also credited as having nine assists by some sources, but his total is widely disputed. Messi’s assist for Mac Allister opened the scoring after just 10 minutes, but Switzerland fought back to level through Dan Ndoye in the second half.
A controversial second yellow card for Breel Embolo, as a result of FIFA’s new “still required extra time to come out on top, eventually taking the lead through Julían Alvarez’s stunner before Lautaro Martínez completed the scoring late on. The win marked the first time in this World Cup that Messi has not scored in an Argentina match, with the captain unable to add to his eight goals in the Golden Boot race.
However, it was not an off-night for Messi by any means, with the Inter Miami star still creating the most chances in the game , taking the most shots and completing the most dribbles —as well as getting a crucial assist.
“He's like a machine,” Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said of Messi after the match. “Those that are not so much acquainted with him might be surprised, and at 39 years of age some people might think he will not rise to the challenge. But I’ve said this before, as long as he wants to be the best—and I’m not saying this because I’m coaching him—but because if he wants to continue, he will continue to be the best.
” As well as becoming the World Cup’s outright all-time assist leader, Messi also reached another milestone on Saturday by taking his goal involvement total to 10 this tournament . Having also reached double digits for goal contributions in 2022, he becomes only the second player—after France’s Kylian Mbappé—to hit 10 or more goals and assists combined in consecutive World Cup tournaments. Diego Maradona is second on the assist charts since 1966.
| Photo Agency/Getty Images With 10 assists in World Cup history, Messi becomes the first player to reach double digits for setting up goals. Assessing assist numbers from tournaments past is not as easy as you might think. A complete list of assist providers from all World Cup since the inaugural competition in 1930 is not available, with statistics from the first tournaments up to the 1970s suffering from a lack of clear archive footage.
There is also the issue what actually constitutes an assist, with historic standards quite different to modern ones. As a result, some sources give Pelé 10 assists, while others have his total as low as six. That said, West Germany captain and 1954 World Cup winner Walter’s tally of nine is largely undisputed and credited as such by FIFA. , has tracked back as far as 1966 to provide an assist-leaders chart for the modern age.
In those parameters, Messi was already the top assister prior to the Switzerland match—ahead of countryman Diego Maradona on eight. Andy Headspeath is a Real Madrid correspondent for Sports Illustrated FC. Originally from the UK, the weather, culture and soccer lured him to Spain over a decade ago where he lives with his wife, son and two untrainable dogs.
A player of unspeakably limited talents and only one fully functional knee, he has more than a decade's experience in a wide variety of editorial roles within sports media, from match reporting to in-depth feature writing and interviews. He specializes in soccer history and culture, as well as—of course—La Liga.
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