Lionel Messi started on the bench for the first time in the World Cup since the quarter-final against Germany in 2006. Yesterday, he came on in the 60th minute to score a curling free kick in the 80th, his sixth goal of the tournament and his 19th career World Cup goal, a record no one else in history has come close to. A reporter at the post-match press conference on Saturday night asked Lionel Scaloni what he had told Messi before sending him on against Jordan, but Scaloni’s answer made the interaction interesting. 

“I didn’t tell him anything at all. No. What am I going to tell him? Honestly, are you asking me that?” He paused, letting the question settle. “He is the one player who doesn’t need to be told absolutely anything. Seriously, what am I going to tell him? ‘Move over here, drop back there, when the ball comes do this’? That would be crazy,” Scaloni said. 

Argentina won the match 3-1, with Giovani Lo Celso and Lautaro Martinez scoring before Messi’s free kick added the gloss in the 80th minute. Jordan came back in stoppage time, but the result was sealed. Argentina had already secured top spot in Group J before kick-off, having beaten Algeria and Austria in their first two matches. This made Scaloni’s decision to rest the 39-year-old Messi a simple squad management tactic. 

The manager had mentioned it at the press conference on Friday, stating Messi would join later and that the team would need to give certain players more minutes before the knockout stages. Messi had also been having a minor problem with his left hamstring during the lead-up to the tournament, another reason not to put unnecessary strain on him in a match that is merely a formality. 

What the 48-year-old manager did say was that watching 55 minutes from the dugout is, in itself, a form of preparation for someone with Messi’s reading of the game. “He had already watched 55 minutes of the match and knew perfectly well how the game was going.”

The coach did allow for one caveat, delivered with the kind of measured honesty. “Of course, there are moments when you can tell him something, putting the joke aside, like: we are making a substitution, we are going to do this on one side and that on the other, so we can manage the game better.” Tactical framing, not instructions.

Messi leads the goal tally for the 2026 World Cup with six, two ahead of France’s Kylian Mbappé. Up until yesterday, Messi was Argentina’s sole scorer in the tournament. Now, they have Lo Celso and Lautaro Martinez joining him on the list. It would have been two hat-tricks in back-to-back games for the former Barcelona talisman if he hadn’t put a penalty wide against Austria on Matchday 2.

Friday’s round of 32 sees Argentina head to Miami to take on Cape Verde, with Messi likely to return to the starting 11.