Messi Levels an All-Time Record, Vozinha Humbles Spain: The World Cup's Opening Round in Moments

Six days into the first 48-team World Cup, the biggest moments have gone to the people you would least expect to deliver them. A 40-year-old goalkeeper kept Spain out on his country's debut, a French winger moved infield at half-time dragged a stuttering side back to life, and Scotland won at a World Cup for the first time since 1990.

And then there was Lionel Messi, 38 and at his sixth tournament, scoring a hat-trick against Algeria to climb level with the most coveted record the men's game has. An all-time mark equalled, a debutant who would not be beaten, a reinvention built on a single pass, and a wait that finally ended: the opening round in moments.

Messi scored his first World Cup hat-trick in Argentina's 3-0 win over Algeria, taking him to 16 at the tournament, level with Miroslav Klose's all-time men's record. The first was the pick of them, taken on the half-turn from Rodrigo De Paul's pass and arrowed into the top corner. The second came from a rebound, the third was curled expertly inside the post.

It was a night of firsts layered on firsts. The hat-trick made Messi only the second man, after Cristiano Ronaldo, to score at five different World Cups, and it came in the tournament he is contesting for a record sixth time. He did not overtake Klose, he equalled him, which leaves the record level and one Messi goal away from being broken outright by a player who has never looked likely to stop.

Vozinha, Cape Verde's 40-year-old goalkeeper, kept Spain out across the full 90 minutes in Atlanta, a goalless draw on his country's first ever World Cup appearance that made him the oldest player to feature in a nation's debut at the tournament. He made 7 saves as Spain, for all their 27 shots, could not find a way past him.

The defining moment came just before half-time, a scramble in which he flung himself at one Spanish effort, scrambled up off the turf, and threw himself back into the air to claw away the rebound. For a man who has spent his career in the lower reaches of Portuguese football, currently with second-tier Chaves, it was the night a lifetime had been building towards. “It was also a cry of resilience,” said his manager, Bubista, of the emotion that overcame him.

The wider world noticed within hours. Driven by a viral push online, Vozinha's following climbed from around 50,000 before kick-off to nearly 10 million inside a day, the most famous goalkeeper on the planet for the crime of keeping a clean sheet against a side expected to win comfortably.

Michael Olise's pass in the 66th minute split the Senegal defence and released Kylian Mbappé to break a deadlock that had embarrassed France for an hour, the goal drawing him level with Olivier Giroud on 57 as France's joint-record scorer. For the 45 minutes before it, France had been awful, managing a single shot while Senegal hit the post through Nicolas Jackson and spurned a glorious chance through Ismaïla Sarr.

The change came at the interval, and it came from Didier Deschamps. He pulled Olise infield from the right and pushed Ousmane Dembélé wide, reasoning that his playmaker would do more damage threading passes from between the lines than drifting along the touchline. It worked almost at once. Olise began picking apart a Senegal defence that had been comfortable all night, and the opener was the purest example of it.

Mbappé saved the record for last. His second, a ferocious drive from around 30 yards in stoppage time, took him to 58 and clear of Giroud as France's all-time leading scorer, and it stands as the finest goal of the round so far. He had arrived in the United States under a cloud, his attitude questioned and a fan petition demanding his exit from Real Madrid having gathered tens of millions of unverifiable signatures.

For one half he played to those doubts. For the other, with Olise orchestrating, he buried them.

Scotland edged Haiti 1-0 in their opening match, John McGinn's first-half goal earning their first World Cup finals win since 1990. It was only their fifth victory in the tournament's entire history, and it arrived on their first appearance at a World Cup since 1998, the end of a generation spent watching everyone else.

The goal was scrappy in the way these long-awaited ones often are, a deflected McGinn strike from the edge of the box after Haiti's goalkeeper could not hold a Che Adams effort. None of that troubled Steve Clarke's side. It told you, Clarke said afterwards, “how difficult it is for a country like Scotland” to win games at a World Cup.

The win sent Scotland top of Group C after Brazil and Morocco drew, an unfamiliar position and an unfamiliar feeling for a support that has known mostly near misses. “Scotland winning at the World Cup again is the main takeaway from tonight,” said McGinn, the man who delivered it.

Spain begin the second round against Saudi Arabia on Sunday with something to prove, the pre-tournament favourite left the most exposed of the big names after Cape Verde held them. They are not the only side carrying questions into the next round. The pick of the fixtures is the Netherlands against Sweden on Saturday in Houston, with Sweden top of Group F after a 5-1 demolition of Tunisia and the Netherlands needing a response to their draw with Japan, while Cape Verde face Uruguay with the chance to show the Spain result was no accident.

The record books may not stay still for long either. Mbappé sits two goals behind the all-time mark with Iraq to come, and Messi is already level with it. Untouched since 2014, the most famous record in the men's game might not survive Matchday 2.

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