The Messi record almost nobody mentions: the only player in the top 10 of both youngest and oldest scorers

Pretty much everything has already been said about Lionel Messi — the all-time leading scorer among active players, one of only two players to score in five different World Cups or more (alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, who reached six), the captain who finally lifted the trophy in 2022. But there's one record of his that almost never comes up, and it says as much about his longevity as any of the others: he is the only player in World Cup history to appear in the top 10 of youngest goalscorers and, at the same time, in the top 10 of oldest goalscorers.

It's not a coincidence of a couple of spots' difference. It's the same player, with just over 20 years exactly between one extreme and the other.

To put the company he keeps on each list in perspective: among the youngest, he's preceded by names like Pelé (the youngest of all, at just 17), Michael Owen, and, more recently, Lamine Yamal — all of them precocious breakthroughs who grab headlines precisely for debuting so young. Among the oldest, he shares the list with Roger Milla (the all-time record, at 42), Cristiano Ronaldo, Pepe, and Cuauhtémoc Blanco — the other category of player that grabs attention, the ones still scoring when they "should" already be retired.

What's remarkable is that Messi literally belongs to both categories at once. The same person who, at 18, scored his first World Cup goal in a 6-0 rout of Serbia and Montenegro is still, twenty years later, scoring in knockout rounds against players half his age. No other name in the tournament's history can say the same.