LIONEL MESSI BECAME THE THIRD PLAYER TO REACH 100 NATIONAL TEAM GOALS !
Picture : Messi the third player with 100+ national team goals!
Statistics on 28 March friendlies
Argentina vs Curaçao
*Argentina became the first team to win its first two matches immediately after winning the World Cup (2-0 vs Panama, 7-0 vs Curaçao) since Brazil after their 1994 triumph (2-0 vs Yugoslavia on 23 December 1994, 5-0 vs Slovakia on 22 February 1995, both friendlies).
*7-0 vs Curaçao is the biggest victory for Argentina since the friendly in Houston against Bolivia on 9 April 2015 (also 7-0).
*At home, Argentina had not achieved such a large win since 8 October 1975 (11-0 vs Venezuela in Santa Fe for the Copa América).
*Lionel Messi became the third player in history to reach 100 goals for a national team. After his 3 goals vs Curaçao, he has now 102 with Argentina (in 174 games).
Cristiano Ronaldo (122 goals in 198 games) and Ali Daei (109 in 148 partidos) crossed 100-goal mark before him.
*Messi is the only player in the history of the Argentine National Team to score in 18 consecutive years (from 2006 to 2023).
*All 3 Messi’s came in the first half. He last achieved a first half hat-trick on 22 February 2020 (for Barcelona vs Eibar). With Argentina, he never achieved it before.
*Messi has scored his 9th hat-trick with Argentina (see the table below). Almost half of them (4) occurred against CONCACAF teams (Guatemala, Panama, Haiti, Curaçao).
*Messi is now on minimal gap from the world record shared by Cristiano Ronaldo and Vivian John Woodward (both of them scored 10 hat-tricks in national team games).
*From his last 13 games for Argentina (since 5-0 vs Estonia on 5 June 2022), Messi found the net in 12, failing to do it in only one, vs Poland at World Cup.
In these 13 games, Messi scored 21 goals.
Germany vs Belgium
*Belgium defeated Germany (3-2) for the first time since 1954, when they won 2-0 in a friendly in Brussels.
*It was the first Belgium away win over Germany for 113 years; the previous is dated by 16 May 1910 (3-0 in a friendly played in Duisburg).
*Belgium became the first team to score 2 goals against Germany on German soil in the first 10 minutes of a match (Carrasco at 6' and Lukaku at 9') since 12 November 1939 (against Czechoslovakia, goals by Josef Bican at 6' and Antonin Puc at 8').
*Overall, Germany had not conceded 2 goals in the first 10 minutes of a game since 1 March 2006, in Florence against Italy (Gilardino scored at 4' and Luca Toni at 7').
*Niklas Füllkrug (who scored the first of German goals vs Belgium) became the first Bundesteam player in XXI century to score as many as 6 goals in his 6 games.
*This Füllkrug’s goal was also the 4th consecutive Germany's goals scored by him. The last who scored 4 successive Germany goals was Kevin Kuranyi in 2004.
| MESSI HAT-TRICKS | FOR | ARGENTINA | ||
| Game | Date | Tournament | Goals | |
| 1 | Switzerland 3-1 | 29/02/2012 | Friendly | 3 |
| 2 | Brazil 4-3 | 09/06/2012 | Friendly | 3 |
| 3 | Guatemala 4-0 | 15/06/2013 | Friendly | 3 |
| 4 | Panama 5-0 | 11/06/2016 | Copa America | 3 |
| 5 | Ecuador 3-1 | 11/10/2017 | World Cup Qualifier | 3 |
| 6 | Haiti 4-0 | 30/05/2018 | Friendly | 3 |
| 7 | Bolivia 3-0 | 10/09/2021 | World Cup Qualifier | 3 |
| 8 | Estonia 5-0 | 05/06/2022 | Friendly | 5 |
| 9 | Curaçao 7-0 | 28/03/2023 | Friendly | 3 |