"My career is coming to an end. What more could there be after this?" Lionel Messi said those words after lifting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Two and a half years later, he's preparing for a sixth World Cup. It turns out there was quite a lot more.
Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo will become the first players in history to appear at six different World Cups — two decades on from their teenage debuts, when the world was just beginning to understand what it was watching. That's the headline, and it genuinely earns it.
The Argentina captain has barely slowed down since relocating to MLS. He won the Copa America on US soil in 2024, finished as the top scorer in South American qualifying, and is just two caps short of 200. Inter Miami isn't the Champions League, but he's not using it as a retirement home either. "I love playing football, and I'm going to do it until I can't anymore," he said recently — and the numbers back that up. He has 13 World Cup goals. Miroslav Klose's all-time record of 16 is within reach, particularly given Argentina's group — Algeria, Austria, and Jordan — doesn't represent the sternest early resistance.
Ronaldo's unfinished business
Ronaldo's situation is more complicated, and more interesting for it. At 41, he confirmed this will be his last World Cup: "I think it will be the moment." Portugal coach Roberto Martinez has kept faith in him as first-choice striker despite a goalless Euro 2024 that ended in the quarter-finals. Martinez's verdict was diplomatic but pointed — "He is the captain and he shows exemplary commitment" — which is not quite the same as saying he's the best option.
There's a genuine debate around whether Ronaldo, with his eight World Cup goals and zero in the knockout stages, is a net positive or a constraint on a Portugal squad loaded with younger talent. The 6-1 win over Switzerland in 2022 — the night he was dropped to the bench — remains an awkward data point for that conversation.
Portugal face Colombia, Uzbekistan, and DR Congo in the group stage. On paper, they should advance comfortably, and they're legitimate contenders to go deep. Whether Ronaldo's role enhances or limits that run is the question that will define how his international career is remembered. Eight goals in World Cups, none when the stakes are highest — that's the stat that follows him in.
A potential quarter-final collision
If both sides top their respective groups, Argentina and Portugal would meet in the quarter-finals in Kansas City on July 11. A Messi vs. Ronaldo World Cup knockout match, at 39 and 41, on what would be their final stage. The odds on that scenario are worth a look now, before the bracket does the work for you.
Messi will turn 39 three days before Argentina's opener against Algeria in Dallas. Ronaldo is already 41. The conversation about their rivalry has been running for 20 years and will outlast both their careers — but this is the last time it plays out competitively, on the biggest stage. After North America, it's done.
"He is more than just a football player, but for the national team that is all he is," Martinez said of Ronaldo. That framing matters. Whatever the legacy debates, in this tournament, they're footballers with jobs to do. One wants to become the all-time World Cup scorer. The other wants to win one at 41. Both are still here. That's the story.
