With his two goals against Austria on Monday, Lionel Messi has now scored more times at a World Cup than any other player.The first was 20 years ago as a substitute in a 6-0 win against Serbia and Montenegro in Germany. He failed to score in the 2010 World Cup, before hitting four in 2014 in Brazil.Four years later in Russia, he found the net just once from 18 shots at goal. Then, in 2022, his seven goals, including two in the final against France, powered Argentina to World Cup glory.Already in this tournament, he has five goals in two matches, after following up his hat-trick in the first game against Algeria with a brace of goals against Austria.With 18 to choose from, against 12 different opponents, we asked a bunch of our writers to pick their favourite World Cup goal by Messi.2014 World Cup: Bosnia and Herzegovina, group stageIt seems incredible now, but Lionel Messi went into the 2014 World Cup with major question marks hanging over his international record.His tally of 37 goals in 83 senior appearances for Argentina would have been good going for a mere mortal, but with Messi having scored a frankly God-like 91 times for Barcelona in 2012, the Argentine media and public could have been forgiven for expecting more.Not least as, at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Messi had failed to score in any of Argentina’s five matches (a fact compounded by his failure to score in a home Copa America the following year).The many thousands of Argentines who made the trip to Brazil always had faith. Their anthem that summer, to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising”, not only reminded any listening Brazilian of their defeat to Argentina at the 1990 World Cup, and hammered home their view that Diego Maradona was better than Pelé, it also proclaimed: “You are going to see Messi, We are going to take the Cup.”Still, when Messi walked out onto the pitch at the iconic Maracanã stadium for Argentina’s first match of those finals against Bosnia and Herzegovina, he did so with a World Cup record of eight played, one scored.So as he gained possession near the centre circle, exchanged passes with Gonzalo Higuain, dropped a shoulder to send two Bosnian defenders careering into one another, and slapped the ball left-footed into the bottom corner from 20 yards, Messi wasn’t just kick-starting Argentina’s campaign in Brazil, he was finally establishing international football — and the World Cup in particular — as his stage.James Maw(Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)2018 World Cup: Nigeria, group stageA wide-eyed Diego Maradona was watching on from high. Jorge Sampaoli, Argentina’s coach, was self-combusting on the sideline. Argentina were dysfunctional and doomed. But for a couple of seconds, inside Messi’s bubble, all was beauty.The pass, from Ever Banega, was gorgeous, but Messi still had an incredible amount to do. The ball was dropping over his shoulder. He was already running at full tilt. Nigeria defender Kenneth Omeruo looked to be in the perfect position, there to pounce on Messi’s touch if it was anything less than perfect. It wasn’t. Messi welcomed the ball into his run, cushioning it with his thigh and then — sublimely, almost in slow motion — nudging it ahead with his left foot. By the time it touched the ground, Omeruo was irrelevant, grasping at fresh air.The finish was emphatic, the perfect conclusion to a miniature masterpiece. Jack Lang2022 World Cup: Mexico, group stageThe World Cup in Qatar was supposed to be Lionel Messi’s last. When Argentina lost the opening game to Saudi Arabia in a smaller, less forgiving format, the stakes could not have been higher. I still remember Messi coming through the mixed zone in Lusail. He said they were muertos. Dead.It made people think Messi was destined never to win the World Cup. The hysteria was palpable. When they played Mexico in their next game, an hour went by, and it was still 0-0. Lionel Scaloni tried everything. He began making the changes that would set Argentina on the way to victory, introducing Enzo Fernandez, then Julian Alvarez. But before they could have any effect, Messi stepped up. He appeared on the edge of the box, and boom. Instead of leaping out of the dugout, Scaloni’s assistant Pablo Aimar slumped in his chair, head in his hands. When he revealed his face, the anguish and the relief were unforgettable. Messi, meanwhile, was running to the Argentina fans as if carried by a surge of electricity. (Markus Gilliar – GES Sportfoto/Getty Images)As this list attests, he has arguably scored a couple of better goals in his World Cup career. But the weight and significance of this one made it very memorable, as it kept his World Cup dream alive. Messi and his teammates were muertos no longer. James Horncastle2022 World Cup: Australia, round of 16I’ll choose the other goal in Qatar, which calmed the nation’s collective nerves. There have been better ones off that magical left boot, of course, but as with the strike against Mexico, few have meant as much. Against Australia in the last-16 Argentina were again labouring when faced with an inferior opponent, digging in and determined to spoil their World Cup dreams. Enter Messi, from that inside right channel where he has spent so much of his storied career, firing a pass into Alexis Mac Allister before picking up Nicolas Otamendi’s lay-off in the box and instinctively finding the bottom corner to break the deadlock and put Argentina ahead.(Glyn KIRK / AFP via Getty Images)When you look up ‘Messi goal’ hundreds look just like it — the vision, the movement, the touch, the finish — but on the road to what would be his greatest achievement of all, it was as memorable as any.Ben Burrows2022 World Cup: France, finalHis second goal against France isn’t the most beautiful goal Messi has ever scored at a World Cup. In fact, it might be the ugliest, a scruffy rebound shot that didn’t even have the aesthetic value of hitting the back of the net. But there are scruffy rebounds and scruffy rebounds: ones that put your team ahead in extra-time of the World Cup final carry rather more importance than any others. Especially when a player’s talent has never been questioned, but his legacy would be defined by whether he won the biggest team prize, to go along with all the individual and club ones.This wasn’t the winner, but it was his second in a winning World Cup final. Nobody could question him after that. Nick Miller2014 World Cup: Iran, group stageIn the summer of 2014, I briefly found myself an Iran supporter. They’d been considered the rank outsiders going into the World Cup. I wrote an article that essentially said: look, they don’t have that much individual talent, but they’re well-organised, they probably won’t lose matches 5-0, and might cause Argentina more problems than everyone expects. To my surprise, this went semi-viral in Iran and one day I woke up with 10,000 extra followers on Twitter.Therefore, I was really relying on Iran to make me not look stupid. And, thankfully, for 90 minutes, they put in a genuinely superb performance: good last-ditch defending, the odd counter-attack, everything you could wish for to create an unlikely underdog success story. A 0-0 draw against Argentina would have been one of the best results in their history.And then … The thing is, Iran didn’t even do anything wrong. They didn’t give Messi that much space. He collected the ball in an inside-right position, dropped his shoulder — but was still in quite a tight spot — and curled the ball into the far corner from 25 yards. Iran did everything they possibly could to stop him, and yet he still found a way.(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)“We have a genius who is called Messi, and fortunately, he is Argentine,” said Argentina manager Alejandro Sabella afterward. “Iran made life hard for us, but with Messi, everything is possible.”Michael Cox2026 World Cup: Austria, group stageJust totted up and I’ve realised I have been lucky enough to witness no fewer than ten of his World Cup goals, from the first, as an 18-year-old substitute against Serbia and Montenegro in Gelsenkirchen in 2006, to the 2022 final in Qatar, to this afternoon’s brace in Dallas a couple of days before he turns 39.I just loved the goal that broke the record. It was classic Messi: that typically adroit turn and pass in the build-up and then, after great work from Thiago Almada and Facundo Medina in the build-up, a wonderfully precise first-time shot to wrong-foot Austria goalkeeper Alexander Schlager.Beyond that, there was the instinctive timing to make sure he arrived in the right place at precisely the right time. Perfect.Oliver Kay2014 World Cup: Nigeria, group stageThe other great World Cup he scored against Nigeria. I’m sticking up for this one because it was the culmination of, perhaps, the finest group stage performance in the competition’s history — at least in terms of quality of goals scored by a single player. In 2014, Messi began with that famously outrageous winner against Bosnia, arguably bettered it against Iran a few days later, with a splendid winner in stoppage time. Then, to secure his country’s passage into the next round, he scored twice against Nigeria in Porto Alegre, the second of which was a gorgeous dipping free-kick that buckled Vincent Enyeama’s knees and found the top corner. A work of art. Seb Stafford-Bloor(PEDRO UGARTE / AFP via Getty Images)