The winner of the Copa America Golden Boot in 1991 and 1995 as well as Argentina’s top goal scorer at the FIFA World Cup, Gabriel Omar Batistuta, has sent a congratulatory message to Lionel Messi after their win against the Netherlands.
Argentina qualified for the World Cup quarterfinals last Friday night at the Lusail Iconic Stadium, after settling for a 2-2 draw at the end of regulation and going to penalty kicks.
In the game, Spanish referee Antonio Miguel Mateu Lahoz had to pull out 18 yellow cards and one red card in the “Skirmish of Lusail” between Argentina and the Netherlands.
Messi assisted the Argentines in getting the first goal when he gave an intelligent pass in the 16-yard area of the Dutch goal area for Nahuel Molina to open the score of the game.
Messi’s pass was classified by renowned commentator Peter Drury as “Lionel Messi found an angle that did not seem to exist.”
After a penalty was conceded by Denzel Dumfries of the Netherlands in a foul in the penalty area on Seville’s left back, Marcos Javier Acuña, in the 71st minute of the game, Lionel Messi converted the penalty.
The captain of Argentina, Lionel Messi, scored his tenth and fourth goals in the World Cup in Qatar, he also got his fifteenth international goal in 2022.
Messi’s goal tied the goals scored by Argentina’s all-time goal scorer in the FIFA World Cup; both players, Gabriel Batistuta and Lionel Messi have scored ten goals for Argentina in the competition.
Gabriel Batistuta, a quick, hard-working, and powerful player with an eye for goal and a good all-round game, is the fourth player to record a hat-trick in two World Cups after Sándor Kocsis, Just Fontaine, and Gerd Müller.
Before equaling Batistuta’s World Cup goals last Friday night, Lionel Messi had surpassed Batistuta’s all-time leading goalscorer with 54 goals in 77 official matches for Argentina in June 2016.
On Batistuta’s official Twitter handle, @GBatistutaOK, he shared his congratulations after Argentina qualified for the semifinals for the first time and Messi scored his 10th World Cup goal.
Batistuta tweeted with the caption, “Dear Leo, congratulations! I held the record for 20 years, and I enjoyed it. Now it is a great honor and pleasure to share it with you, hoping with all my heart that you can surpass it already in the next match!”
