Lionel Messi, Argentina's own answer to Peter Pan

For this week's report from the World Cup there is clearly only one possible topic. One player who, despite having his fair share of doubters before the tournament started, illuminated the Arrowhead Stadium and set Argentina on the way in their defence of the trophy.

That is right, Facundo Medina enjoyed a very solid World Cup debut on the left side of the Albiceleste defence and more than made up for the absence of Nicolás Tagliafico. Had you there for a second, right? Because Monday's 3-0 thrashing of Algeria was, quelle surprise, all about Lionel Messi, Argentina's own answer to Peter Pan who continued to defy Father Time and the doubters with another virtuoso international performance to add to his already bulging collection.

The raw numbers say it all. Messi corrected an interesting anomaly in his career with his first World Cup hat-trick, all at the expense of Luca Zidane, son of Leo's former antagonist at Real Madrid, Zinedine. A perfectly hit strike from outside the area guided into the angle of the net; an opportunistic rebound effort where he reacted before anyone else on the pitch seemed to realise what was happening; a rasping low shot that left Zidane absolutely no chance to round off the rout.

Messi needed just 80 minutes to break Algeria and swell his World Cup goal tally to 16, tying Miroslav Klose for the all-time record. What is more, he could have broken it outright, had his early effort not been pulled back for the tightest of offside calls. The Argentina captain turns thirty-nine in June but continues to play with the joy and free flow of that lank-haired teenager who burst onto the scene in Barcelona, no mean feat considering the frustrations one of his illustrious contemporaries and perennial Ballon d'Or rivals suffered barely twenty-four hours later against opposition of similar calibre.

But let's return to Medina, for a moment, as strange as it sounds. Because the Marseille defender is significant in his own right. Why, you ask? Because Medina was the sole member of the starting XI that took the field in Kansas City that had not featured four years earlier in some capacity in Qatar. Across this entire Argentina squad, just seven did not make the trip in 2022, and in the case of Gio Lo Celso – who incidentally, we all found out pronounces his surname 'Lo Selso' in a pre-tournament publicity shoot, leaving countless commentators with egg on their faces – only a last-minute injury had precluded his involvement in that triumph.

That kind of continuity is almost unheard of in international football from World Cup to World Cup, and more so in a football culture so volatile as Argentina's. For comparison, just six of the Argentina squad that flopped at Russia 2018 were on the plane in Qatar. The proportion has essentially been flipped on its head through the last three World Cup cycles. As we saw on Monday, that can only be to Argentina's benefit.

These players know each other like the back of their own hand, and play like it. Some of the collective movement and build-up we saw in Argentina's World Cup debut was simply delightful and testament to a team which has come up together and looks determined to enjoy this defence of its title. And with Messi, that X-factor one always needs to win tight games is never far away.