Lionel Messi steps off bench and scores to cap Argentina’s World Cup win over Jordan

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Give him half an hour and he will leave a mark that lasts forever. Lionel Messi stepped off the bench in the 62nd minute and, with one curling free-kick from 22 yards, settled Argentina’s 3-0 World Cup Group J win over Jordan on Sunday. The strike was his sixth goal in three tournament games, his 19th in World Cup football and, remarkably, his first since turning 39. Yazeed Abulaila in the Jordan goal barely moved.

It was the moment a packed stadium had been waiting for. Both sides arrived knowing their fates — Argentina already through as group winners, Jordan eliminated — and the football before Messi’s introduction had an unmistakable air of ceremony about it. There was no edge, no jeopardy, only the sense of a crowd holding its breath for the substitution everyone had circled on the team sheet.

A goal that felt predestined

Messi had been wayward with an earlier free-kick after coming on, dragging it harmlessly over the bar. But when he won a second set-piece 22 yards from goal, the outcome seemed written. He whipped the ball around the Jordan wall with an inordinate amount of bend, so much that it finished in an almost central position, dipping inside the post as Abulaila could only watch it pass. The execution carried the unhurried certainty of a player who has rehearsed this exact picture ten thousand times.

The numbers tell their own story. Nineteen World Cup goals now place Messi among the most prolific scorers the tournament has produced, and the fact that this one arrived after his 39th birthday underlines a longevity that has no obvious precedent at the very top of the international game. Six goals across three matches is the form of a player in his prime, not one supposedly winding down a career that has already delivered everything the sport can offer.

Argentina cruising, with the hard work to come

For all the focus on the substitute, Argentina’s afternoon was a comfortable one long before Messi appeared. The reigning champions controlled possession from the outset, scored twice before the hour and never looked troubled by a Jordan side competing in only its second World Cup. The result preserved a perfect group record and, crucially, allowed Lionel Scaloni to manage minutes in the legs of his most important players ahead of the knockout rounds.

That balance — winning while resting — is the luxury of a team that has navigated its group with something to spare. Scaloni will know, though, that the rhythm of a dead-rubber group game tells him little about how his side will cope when the margins tighten. The defensive solidity that underpinned Argentina’s run to glory four years ago has been tested only intermittently here. The real examination begins now.

Jordan, for their part, leave the tournament with their heads high. Reaching the World Cup at all was a landmark for a nation whose footballing ambitions have grown steadily over the past decade, and facing the world champions on the biggest stage will serve as a marker for where the gap still lies. Abulaila aside, there was little disgrace in a defeat shaped by a generational talent operating at the height of his powers.

What it means going forward

The temptation is to treat every Messi milestone as a farewell, and there is a finite logic to that at 39. Yet the evidence on the pitch points the other way. A player scoring at this rate, striking free-kicks with this precision and being eased into games rather than relied upon for 90 minutes is a weapon Argentina can deploy with surgical timing through the later rounds.

For Scaloni, the strategic question is whether Messi’s role as an impact substitute becomes the template for the knockout phase or whether the captain reclaims his place from the first whistle when the stakes rise. Sunday suggested a side comfortable enough to keep that decision open. Against stronger opposition, the calculus changes quickly.

What is not in doubt is that Messi remains the difference-maker, the man whose half-hour cameo can bend an entire occasion around a single swing of his left foot. Keep track of the milestones, and then get ready for more — because on this evidence, he just keeps producing them.

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