Lionel Messi is a 1000: he will reach that number of matches against Australia and will be able to break other records

A knockout instance in a major tournament is special for any athlete. But for Lionel Messithe duel that the Argentine national team will play this Saturday against Australia for the round of 16 of the World Cup in Qatar will have an extra value: It will be his thousandth game as a professional footballer.

It has been 6,622 days since the man from Rosario made his Barcelona debut on 16 October 2004, when his team beat Espanyol 1-0 in a Catalan derby corresponding to the seventh round of the 2004/05 Spanish league. Since He wore the Barça shirt 778 times, 53 times for Paris Saint-Germain and 168 for the Argentina national team. In his 999 appearances, he scored 788 goals and provided 348 assists.

To these matches can be added the friendlies played with Barcelona (58) and with PSG (3), as well as his participation with selected under-20 (18) and under-23 (5) teams and with subsidiary teams of Barcelona B (22) and Barcelona C (10). In those 116 games, he scored another 66 goals.

Although his first time wearing an albiceleste was in a friendly match that Hugo Tocalli’s Under-20 team beat Paraguay 8-0 at the Argentinos Juniors stadium on 29 June 2004 (four months before his Barcelona debut). Messi’s journey in the senior team began on August 17, 2005 in a friendly against Hungary in Budapest: he came on 18 minutes into the second half for Lisandro López and was sent off 45 seconds later for hitting defender Vilmos Vanczák in the face.

In his 168 international caps, the winner of seven Ballon d’Ors has converted 93 points, far more than any other player (followed by Gabriel Batistuta, with 54, and Sergio Agüero, with 42). The first cry of him was on March 1, 2006 in a friendly match that the team led by José Pekerman lost 3-2 with Croatia in Basel.

That match against the Croatians came 107 days before Leo’s World Cup debut: after being on the bench for 90 minutes against the Ivory Coast in the first group match of Germany 2006, he came on in the 30th minute of the second half of the clash with Serbia and Montenegro (replaced Maximiliano Rodríguez) and scored the last goal in the 6-0 win.

Since, Messi represented the national team in 22 matches in five World Cups, in which he scored eight goals (He is two behind Batistuta, who made 10 in three editions). In Wednesday’s 2-0 win over Poland, he became the Argentine player with the most appearances in this type of tournament: he beat Diego Armando Maradona (21 in four World Cups).

This number of matches not only places him as the most capped Argentinian, but also positions him as the fourth player with the most matches at the World Cup, behind only Germany’s Lothar Matthäus (25) and Miroslav Klose (24), and for Italian Paolo Maldini (23). He will be able to overcome them all if the national team plays seven matches in Qatar and gives the present in all of them.

This Saturday will be the third time Messi has reached a centenary match wearing the national team shirt. His 200th professional match was on June 10, 2009, in a 2-0 loss to Ecuador in Quito for the South Africa 2010 qualifier. His 400th was a much more pleasant one: a 3-1 win over Germany in a friendly match played on August 15, 2012 in Frankfurt. That day he scored a goal and missed a penalty, which was saved by Marc-André ter Stegen.