Lionel Messi scored on three dazzling runs for his second international hat trick, finishing the season with a record 82 goals for club and country in Argentina’s 4-3 win over Brazil in a friendly yesterday at sold-out MetLife Stadium.
With Brazil using a mostly young squad ahead of the Olympics, Romulo put them ahead in the 23rd minute.
Messi gave Argentina a 2-1 lead with goals in the 31st and 34th on spectacular dashes that beat the defense, but Oscar leveled in the 56th and Hulk tapped in a corner kick dropped by goalkeeper Sergio Romero in the 72nd.
Argentina came back once again three minutes later when Frederico Fernandez scored off a corner kick by Sergio Aguero, who had just entered the game.
Then with six minutes to go, Messi picked up the ball at midfield, dribbled and unleashed a left-footed shot from 21 meters that went in just under the crossbar, delighting the crowd of 81,994.
Messi scored 73 goals in 60 games this season for Barcelona, breaking the previous European club record of 67 set by Bayern Munich’s Gerd Mueller in 1973 and the world club record of 70 by Archie Stark of Bethlehem Steel in the American Soccer League in 1925. Messi had nine goals in nine games for Argentina in the same span. His first hat trick for Argentina was at Switzerland on Feb. 29.
While this was Messi’s last formal match of the season, he has an upcoming charity game in Burkina Faso on June 16 and an all-star match in Miami seven days later.
There were nearly more late goals in the entertaining, wide-open match, Fernandez cleared a shot by Brazilian star Neymar off the goal line in the 81st. Goalkeeper Rafael Cabral made a diving stop on Messi’s free kick in the 84th.