Argentina won World Cups during hyperinflation. Can Messi end the myth?

Today, on his 39th birthday, Lionel Messi is writing new chapters to football history.

Every time Argentina has lifted the Fifa World Cup trophy, its citizens were also navigating one of the world's most brutal economic diseases – inflation.

In 1978, when Argentina hosted and won the greatest show on earth for the first time, the annual inflation was 176%.

When Diego Maradona led the Argentina national football team to glory in 1986, inflation averaged 116% that year.

Then came Qatar 2022. The streets of Buenos Aires, the Capital of Argentina, erupted in blue and white as millions danced the tango of victory– and annual inflation simultaneously hit 95% that month in December, which was the highest in three decades with economists expecting it to cross triple figures soon.

Argentina had done it again: won the world's greatest prize while its economy quietly burned.

For the first time in this strange pattern, Argentina enters a World Cup they are defending with inflation dramatically lower than during any of their previous title-winning years. Can the curse finally be broken?

The record-breaker

Today, June 24, 2026 – the man at the centre of it all, Lionel Messi turns 39.

Lionel Messi scored a hat-trick – his first in the World Cup – in the opening game against Algeria to tie the all-time World Cup scoring record of 16 goals held by Germany's Miroslav Klose.

Then, twice against Austria which brought his total to 18, becoming the leading scorer in the history of Fifa World Cup.

He has scored all five of Argentina's goals in the tournament so far, just days before his 39th birthday.

Argentina sees inflation relief under President Milei

May inflation stands at 33.2%, as reported by the government statistics agency INDEC.

Argentine President Javier Milei came to office in late 2023 vowing to eliminate Argentina's sky-high price increases and reverse its chronic fiscal deficits.

More than two years later, his sweeping deregulation and austerity measures have produced a rare budget surplus, charmed investors and slowed inflation – the annual rate, now at 33%, topped 200% when he took power.

Football: The 'Great Equaliser'

There is a reason Argentines have always clung to football during hard times.

Bloomberg reported, high inflation is a persistent feature of Argentina's history, and not necessarily an indicator of World Cup success – the team lost the 1990 final with hyperinflation near 2,000%, and when it lost in 2014, the official rate was only 22%.

The ball doesn't care about the peso. The crowd doesn't check inflation data before it sings.

However, what makes 2026 genuinely different is the man at the centre of it all. This is Messi's sixth and almost certainly final World Cup.

He has lived through multiple disappointing tournaments, announcing his retirement from international football in 2016, only to return and eventually lead Argentina to Copa America glory in 2021 and the World Cup in 2022.

Now aged 39, Messi is reminding why he is one of the greatest of all times, breaking records and creating history.