END OF A SERIE FOR LIONEL MESSI
Messi’s record scoring series in Argentina came to end
Lionel Messi, coming on as a substitute for Argentina in the last qualifying match vs Paraguay (1-0), was very close to scoring. Leo hit the woodwork twice, directly from a corner and from a free kick (nearly made the first “Olympic” goal in the history of World Cup qualification!), but still left the pitch without a goal.
In such an unfortunate way, Messi lost the chance to become the sole record holder of XXI century on the longest scoring streak for a national team.
His streak ended up on 8 games. It is the longest one in his career in “Albiceleste”. And this is also the maximum result for anyone in the world in the current century, repeated by three other players.
| LONGEST | SCORING STREAKS | |||
| IN NATIONAL TEAM | IN XXI CENTURY | |||
| Player | National team | Games | From | To |
| Edin Džeko | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 8 | 10/09/2008 | 12/08/2009 |
| Mohamed Salah | Egypt | 8 | 05/09/2017 | 16/11/2018 |
| Aleksandar Mitrović | Serbia | 8 | 10/06/2019 | 03/09/2020 |
| Lionel Messi | Argentina | 8 | 03/12/2022 | 08/09/2023 |
| Jan Koller | Czech Republic | 7 | 09/10/2004 | 17/08/2005 |
| Mohammad Al-Sahlawi | Saudi Arabia | 7 | 14/01/2015 | 08/10/2015 |
| Robert Lewandowski | Poland | 7 | 30/06/2016 | 10/06/2017 |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | Portugal | 7 | 07/09/2019 | 08/09/2020 |
| Riyad Mahrez | Algeria | 7 | 13/10/2020 | 02/09/2021 |
| Erling Haaland | Norway | 7 | 01/09/2021 | 05/06/2022 |