Lionel Messi scored a stunner against Mexico to silence his doubters, again. With this goal, he equalled Cristiano Ronaldo’s FIFA World Cup goals tally. The Argentine great has already scored twice in this year’s world cup. Although, Portugal’s all-time leading goal scorer will at least have two chances to take the lead against Messi’s 8-goal tally. That gives us an opportunity to go through the Messi vs Ronaldo FIFA World Cup stats.
Messi vs Ronaldo: FIFA World Cup stats
Portugal’s no. 7 has played 18 games for the national team across a record five world cups. He has scored 8 times in those 18 games for the Seleção das Quinas. 3 of those 8 goals are from the penalty box and he has only missed once from the spot on the grandest stage of world football.
On the contrary, Messi has played 21 games for Argentina in five world cups and netted the ball 8 times for La Albiceleste. Messi only scored one penalty in those 8 goals, which came against Saudi Arabia in a shocking losing cause in their opening game of FIFA World Cup 2022.
Both the strikers have a great goal-per-game ratio when it comes to scoring in world cups. Messi has a 0.38 goal-per-game ratio while Ronaldo has a ratio of .44.
Between Ronaldo and Messi, it is the Portuguese captain who has a hat-trick against his name in the World Cup. Ronaldo’s lone hat trick came against Spain in a 3-3 draw in 2018. Messi is yet to score a hat-trick in the world cup.
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They both have scored only once with a free-kick in their respective world cup careers till now. Without the free-kicks, Messi has netted the ball thrice from outside the box in his FIFA World Cup career till now. Meanwhile, Ronaldo has been able to score just once from outside the box excluding the free-kicks.
When it comes to providing assists, Lionel Messi wins the Messi vs Ronaldo World Cup battle. Messi has provided 6 assists to his teammates while Ronaldo has only twice.
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Goals in each FIFA World Cup edition for both the G.O.A.Ts
| Name | 2006 | 2010 | 2014 | 2018 | 2022 |
| Lionel Messi | 1 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 2 |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
With his goal against Ghana, Cristiano Ronaldo became the first and only male player to score in five FIFA World Cups. Only Marta and Christine Sinclair have the same record but in the Women’s World Cup. Marta was the first player ever to have that record.
