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#3 Messi overtakes Cristiano Ronaldo for direct free-kick goals with club and country
It was another great outing with Argentina for the Barcelona man as Lionel Messi ran the show against Ecuador. He was made to wait until injury time for his goal and it finally came from a direct free-kick, his second in the tournament.
The set-piece was right on the edge of the box and as we know, there are very few players better than the left-footed maestro in dead-ball situations at the moment.
This effort took his tally to 58 goals from direct free-kicks with club and country, one more than his eternal rival Cristiano Ronaldo.
#2 Argentina remain unbeaten under Lionel Scaloni
Argentina extended their impressive unbeaten run under manager Lionel Scaloni to 18 games with this commanding win and he is now tied with Marcelo Bielsa for second place in the all-time list.
While Scaloni's tactics seem to be working, more often than not they have been saved by one man and that is their talismanic captain Lionel Messi. Against Ecuador, the former Barcelona man set up the first two goals and also scored the third, to ensure a comfortable win.
Their last defeat across all competitions came in the semifinals of the Copa America 2019 and they will be hoping to avoid the same outcome this time around when they take on Colombia on Tuesday night.
#1 Lionel Messi is all Argentina need to go all the way in Copa America
Lionel Messi has been in incredible form at the Copa America and, with four goals and four assists, has been responsible for 80% of goals scored by Argentina at the competition so far.
He found some support from Lautaro Martinez and Alejandro Gomez in the final third but had to do most of the heavy lifting for his side. He has scored goals from two direct free-kicks, while no other player has been able to find the back of the net from a set-piece even once.
He is also just one goal behind Pele in terms of international goals and given the kind of purple patch he is in at the moment, we expect him to overtake him in the next fixture.
Also See: Top 5 national teams with the most fans in the world
