{"id":5136,"date":"2026-06-22T20:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T20:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/times509.com\/?p=5136"},"modified":"2026-06-22T20:05:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T20:05:18","slug":"world-cup-2026-argentina-makes-it-to-the-round-of-16-after-beating-austria-2-0-with-a-record-double-from-messi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/22\/world-cup-2026-argentina-makes-it-to-the-round-of-16-after-beating-austria-2-0-with-a-record-double-from-messi\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Argentina makes it to the round of 16 after beating Austria 2-0 with a record double from Messi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Argentina, the defending world champion, qualified for the Round of 16 of the 2026 World Cup by beating Austria 2-0 on Monday in Arlington, Texas, thanks to a record double from Lionel Messi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The Argentine captain, who had already scored a hat-trick against Algeria (3-0), is now the sole top scorer in World Cup history, with 18 goals, two ahead of German Miroslav Klose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The eight-time Ballon d&#8217;Or winner, who turns 39 on Wednesday, first missed a penalty, which went wide (9th minute), before opening the scoring with a left-footed finish in the 38th minute. He doubled the lead in stoppage time (90+5).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Argentina, the defending world champion, qualified for the Round of 16 of the 2026 World Cup by beating Austria 2-0 on Monday in Arlington, Texas, thanks to a record double&hellip;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow67bgCw:productID":"","_angie_page":false,"content-type":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_ayudawp_aiss_exclude":false,"_ayudawp_aiss_summary":"","_ayudawp_aiss_summary_provider":"","_ayudawp_aiss_summary_hash":"","page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51,52],"tags":[],"coauthors":[57],"class_list":["post-5136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news-sport","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5138,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5136\/revisions\/5138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5136"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/times509.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}