Argentina superstar Lionel Messi has just missed his third penalty in six attempts at the World Cup.

The former Barcelona forward may be the greatest footballer who ever lived, but if he has one weakness it’s perhaps that he is a little wasteful with opportunities from the penalty spot.

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Egypt are currently 1-0 up in today’s World Cup 2026 clash, with the current holders now needing to come from behind if they want to stay in the competition and get the chance to retain their trophy.

In this kind of situation, you’d be looking at Messi to get you out of trouble, but he made a bit of a mess of it, though it was also a pretty good save by the Egypt goalkeeper Mostafa Shobeir…

Messi MISSES another penalty ????

Egypt's keeper Mostafa Shobeir throws himself at the ball to stop
Argentina capitalising on a foul on Nicolas Tagliafico ? pic.twitter.com/O3RuRaU5aa

— ITV Football (@itvfootball) July 7, 2026

Messi will surely get other opportunities in this game, but this is not the start he would’ve wanted, and his side are still a goal down at the time of writing.

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Lionel Messi to follow Cristiano Ronaldo with early World Cup exit?

Messi famously won the World Cup with Argentina in 2022, scoring a brace in the final win over France, and he’s been on fire at the start of this year’s tournament.

Still, we could realistically be about to see both Messi and his long-time nemesis Cristiano Ronaldo heading home from the World Cup within 24 hours of each other.

Ronaldo’s Portugal were eliminated by Spain yesterday, and now we might be about to see a pretty big upset if Egypt can hold on to this lead or even extend it.

This is surely not over yet, though, and Messi hasn’t tended to let a penalty miss get him too down in the past. If anything, he sometimes seems like he likes more of a challenge to make things more interesting anyway!