Kylian Mbappé vs Lionel Messi
Team-mates at PSG for two seasons and opponents in the 2022 World Cup final, they finished the 2026 World Cup first and second among all-time World Cup scorers, Mbappé with 22 goals and Messi 21.
By the Oddsivio teamLast reviewed Stats updated
Last season · club and country together · official matches
Who does what?
Lionel Messi created more chances last season; they were too close to call on goals. That said, Kylian Mbappé completed a higher share of passes (86% vs 82%).
What separates them
2 of 4 pass both our tests: a big enough gap, and sure enough to hold.
- Mbappé
- Messi
- Typical forwards
- Goals per 90Too close to call1.1057 goals1.0245 goals
Not sure enough to name a leader.
- Chances created per 90Messi led2.5128 chances3.2140 chances
About a quarter more chances created: about 21 more over 30 full matches.
Held up next season: about 9 in 10
- Assists per 90Messi slightly ahead0.2513 assists0.4118 assists
Gaps like this held up about 6 in 10 times: not often enough to name a leader.
- Pass completion share of passes completedMbappé led86%50%100%82%
Pass completion depends a lot on role and team.
Held up next season: about 9 in 10
Per 90 = per 90 minutes played, so different minutes compare fairly.
Does it hold up?
Without penalties
Lionel Messi led (0.99 vs 0.81 per 90; 44 goals to 42).
Mbappé 15 of 57 goals were penaltiesMessi 1 of 45 goals was a penalty
How they play · volume, not a lead
Lionel Messi won more duels (5.7 vs 3.8 per 90) and tried more take-ons (5.9 vs 4.9 per 90) last season.
Why this comparison
By the time Lionel Messi joined Paris Saint-Germain in August 2021, Kylian Mbappé, then 22, had been on the winning side against him twice: at the 2018 World Cup, where his two goals helped France knock Argentina out 4–3, and in the Champions League that February, when he scored a hat-trick at Camp Nou. In October 2021 Mbappé said he had never imagined him coming to Paris and had filed him among the players he would never get to play with. They spent two seasons together and won two Ligue 1 titles, and in between met in the 2022 World Cup final, where Mbappé scored three goals and Messi two before Argentina won on penalties.
The 2026 World Cup turned it into a race for a record. Messi, two days short of his 39th birthday, passed Miroslav Klose's 16 World Cup goals first, against Austria on 22 June; Mbappé caught and passed him with two goals in the third-place game against England on 18 July and finished with 22 to Messi's 21, and with the Golden Boot. Six weeks after Argentina lost the final to Spain, Messi announced that he was retiring from Argentina's team, and at the Ballon d'Or ceremony on 26 October 2026 Mbappé was second and Messi fifth.
Every number · last season
| MbappéKylian Mbappé | Stat | MessiLionel Messi |
|---|---|---|
4,674 | Minutes | 3,981 |
56 | Matches | 46 |
82.71Star · 40 club games · as of 2026-11-06 | Current squad importance | 88.38Star · 40 club games · as of 2026-11-06 |
1.1057 in total | goals per 90 | 1.0245 in total |
0.2513 in total | assists per 90 | 0.4118 in total |
2.5128 in total | chances created per 90 | 3.2140 in total |
4.1215 in total | shots per 90 | 3.5154 in total |
4.9257 in total | take-ons tried per 90 | 5.9263 in total |
0.29 in total | tackles per 90 | 0.733 in total |
0.15 in total | interceptions per 90 | 0.16 in total |
3.8199 in total | duels won per 90 | 5.7254 in total |
86% | pass completion | 82% |
Goals and assists are counted from match events; the other counts come from the provider's detailed match stats. Squad importance describes the current club role over its recent club-game window; it is independent of the comparison window.
Have they played each other?
They have faced each other in four competitive games, and the list below has three of them, because our records do not include the 2018 World Cup. In that last-16 game in Kazan, on 30 June 2018, France won 4–3 with two goals from Mbappé, then 19, who also won the penalty for the first, while Messi set up two of Argentina's three. In February and March 2021 Paris Saint-Germain beat Barcelona 4–1 at Camp Nou, where Mbappé scored three and Messi a penalty, and drew 1–1 in Paris, where both scored and Messi had a penalty saved. The 2022 final ended 3–3 after extra time; both took their team's first kick of the shoot-out and scored, and Argentina won it 4–2. In the four games Mbappé scored nine goals and Messi four. As PSG team-mates, from 29 August 2021 to 3 June 2023, they played in the same competitive game 67 times and started 60 of them together. The list below has 66: it lacks PSG's Coupe de France tie against Nice on 31 January 2022, a 0–0 draw that Nice won on penalties, in which both scored from the spot. PSG won 44 of the 67, drew 12, with that tie counted as a draw, and lost 11. In those games Mbappé scored 61 goals and Messi 27; in ESPN's match records Messi set up 20 of Mbappé's goals and Mbappé 12 of Messi's, which Transfermarkt counts as 14. We rebuilt all 67 games from ESPN's line-ups and goal records.
Looking up their matches…
What the numbers don't show
The card's seasons cover different months for the two players. Messi's league, MLS, runs from February to December, so on 29 October 2026 the card's last-season window for him is Inter Miami's 2025 MLS season, play-offs and MLS Cup included, three of its Leagues Cup games, and Argentina's qualifier against Venezuela in September 2025 and eight World Cup games: 46 games and 3,981 minutes. It leaves out friendlies, the 2025 Club World Cup, which our data counts in the season before, and the CONCACAF Champions Cup, which it does not cover. For Mbappé the window is Real Madrid's 2025/26 season and France's qualifiers and World Cup games, 56 games and 4,674 minutes. The card does not adjust for how strong a league is, and most of Messi's minutes in those windows came in MLS, most of Mbappé's in La Liga and the Champions League. Penalties weigh more on Mbappé's side: 15 of his 57 goals there were penalties and one of Messi's 45, who at the 2026 World Cup missed one against Austria and had another saved against Egypt.
Assist counts depend on who keeps them. The card counts the last pass before a goal, from match events. MLS also credits a secondary assist for the pass before that when it judges it instrumental in the chance, so its official figures for Messi run higher: 19 assists in the 2025 regular season, and 15 in the 2026 regular season by 28 October 2026. Our match feed also credits him with fewer last-pass assists in 2025 than ESPN's play-by-play does, so the card's assist row for him is best read as a minimum. Chances created do not depend on that rule: over the two years to 29 October 2026 Messi created 2.9 per 90 minutes to Mbappé's 2.0, which puts him in the top 1% of forwards in our data, in two years in which he turned 38 and then 39.
Estimated value
Kylian Mbappé's Oddsivio estimated value is higher: €200m (#3 of 10,342 players valued) to Lionel Messi's €11m (#1,379 of 10,342 players valued). Mbappé's estimate rose 10% since season start; Messi's estimate dipped 29% this season.Oddsivio estimated value — a model estimate from recent performance data, not betting advice.
Kylian Mbappé
Oddsivio estimated value
€200m
+10% since season start
#3 of 10,342 players valued#2 of 511 in La Liga
Lionel Messi
Oddsivio estimated value
€11m
−29% this season
#1,379 of 10,342 players valued#37 of 729 in the Major League Soccer
Questions fans ask
Who has scored more World Cup goals, Mbappé or Messi?
Mbappé, by one. He has 22 in 22 games, four at the 2018 World Cup, eight in 2022 and ten in 2026, the most in the tournament's history, UEFA says; Messi has 21 in 34 games over six World Cups, from 2006 to 2026. Messi got past Klose's 16 first: a hat-trick against Algeria drew him level, and the first of his two goals against Austria, on 22 June 2026, took him past. He held the record until the third-place game on 18 July, when Mbappé scored in the 48th and 66th minutes. Mbappé won the Golden Boot in 2022, with eight goals to Messi's seven, and in 2026, with ten to Messi's eight; Messi won the Golden Ball, for the tournament's best player, in 2014 and 2022, and in 2026 he took the Silver Ball and Mbappé the Bronze behind Rodri. Messi holds the records for World Cup games played, 34, and won, 23. After the third-place game Mbappé said he would rather not have been the record scorer and be playing in the final.
Messi vs Mbappé stats: whose numbers are bigger?
Over a career, Messi's by far: by 28 October 2026 he had scored 936 goals, 672 of them for Barcelona in 778 games, 32 for PSG, 106 for Inter Miami and 126 for Argentina in 208 caps. Mbappé, eleven and a half years younger, had 27 for Monaco, 256 for PSG, where he is the record scorer, 100 for Real Madrid, the hundredth coming in his 116th game, in the 2–1 win at Barcelona on 25 October 2026, and 67 for France, a national record, in 107 caps. The card at the top names a leader on a row only when the gap between them is big enough that it would probably last. On 29 October 2026, in the card's last-season window, that gives Messi chances created and Mbappé pass completion, with goals too close to call; over the two years to 29 October 2026 Mbappé leads on goals, 110 to 73, and pass completion, and Messi on chances created and assists, 32 to 21.
How did Mbappé and Messi do together at PSG?
They won Ligue 1 in both their seasons, 2021–22 and 2022–23, but went out in the last 16 of the Champions League each time, to Real Madrid and then Bayern Munich. With Neymar they formed a front three that started together for the first time at Club Brugge in September 2021. In ESPN's match data Messi set up Mbappé more often than the other way round, 20 goals to 12, and Mbappé scored far more: 61 goals in their 67 games together, to Messi's 27. The crowd at the Parc des Princes was harder on Messi. He and Neymar were booed after the exit against Real Madrid in March 2022, and in May 2023 PSG suspended him, initially for two weeks, over a trip to Saudi Arabia he made without the club's permission; some fans booed him again at his last game, on 3 June 2023. That month Mbappé told La Gazzetta dello Sport that Messi had not got the respect he deserved in France, and in October 2025 he said playing with him had helped him understand the game.
Do Mbappé and Messi get on?
On the record, yes. Christophe Galtier, their coach at PSG, said in December 2022 that Mbappé had shown a lot of class by congratulating Messi. Asked by Olé in February 2023 whether he had talked about the final with Mbappé, Messi said they had talked about the celebrations in Argentina, that he too had once lost a World Cup final and had not wanted to hear about it afterwards, and that there was no problem with Kylian, quite the opposite. The sharpest moment came from elsewhere: in May 2022 Mbappé said that football in South America was not as advanced as in Europe. Messi answered that they had not talked about it and that he had not seen what Mbappé said, but that in Spain he had often told team-mates how hard it would be for them to qualify for a World Cup if they had to play in South America. In January 2025 Neymar said on Romário's YouTube channel that Mbappé had got a little jealous when Messi arrived, because he did not want to share Neymar with anyone; Mbappé answered in a TNT Sports interview that he wanted to remember the positive things about Neymar and their time in Paris. Mbappé has kept praising Messi: on the eve of France's World Cup game against Iraq in June 2026, asked to compare himself with the tournament's other stars, he said Messi was the best, along with Cristiano Ronaldo.
What have Mbappé and Messi won?
Each has a World Cup, Mbappé from 2018 and Messi from 2022, and almost everything else tilts towards Messi, whose 48 team trophies include four Champions Leagues and ten La Liga titles with Barcelona, two Ligue 1 titles with PSG, two Copa Américas with Argentina and, with Inter Miami, the 2023 Leagues Cup, the 2024 Supporters' Shield and the 2025 MLS Cup. He has eight Ballon d'Or awards, six European Golden Shoes and, in 2024 and 2025, MLS's Most Valuable Player award, the first player to win it twice running. Mbappé's other honours include the 2021 Nations League with France, seven French league titles, one with Monaco and six with PSG, and, at Real Madrid, the 2024 UEFA Super Cup and Intercontinental Cup. He won the European Golden Shoe for 2024–25, La Liga's scoring title for 2025–26 and the Golden Boot at two World Cups. He has won neither the Champions League nor the Ballon d'Or, in which his best place is second, in 2026.
Will Mbappé and Messi play each other again?
No game between them is scheduled. Messi announced his retirement from Argentina's team in a handwritten letter posted on 31 August 2026 and played his farewell game, a 3–0 win over Benin in Buenos Aires, on 6 October 2026, scoring a penalty in his 208th and final game, so a France–Argentina game would now be without him. At club level Messi is under contract with Inter Miami through 2028 and Mbappé signed with Real Madrid in 2024 for five seasons, and the two clubs have never met in a competitive game. By late October 2026 Inter Miami had clinched a place in the MLS play-offs and Real Madrid were in the Champions League league phase.