Published 12:14 07 Jul 2026 GMT
Lionel Messi has not eaten pizza or drunk a soda in 12 years.
He starts every morning with yerba mate from a gourd he has carried with him since childhood.
He has scored 20 World Cup goals - more than any man in history - and he turned 39 three days before the crowd at AT&T Stadium chanted his name so loudly that he could hear it on the bench.
He is, by any reasonable measure, not supposed to still be doing this.
But here he is, leading the 2026 World Cup Golden Boot race with eight goals, playing in his record sixth tournament, and lining up against Egypt in the round of 16 today in Atlanta.
Argentina have won all five of their games so far. Messi has scored in eight consecutive World Cup matches - a run that has no historical precedent in the men's game.
Even his rivals cannot quite believe it.
After Messi scored a hat trick against Algeria on the opening day - breaking Cristiano Ronaldo's record as the oldest player to score a World Cup hat trick in the process - Erling Haaland, who had scored twice himself earlier that afternoon, posted a single reaction on Snapchat: "Messi is a madman."
The question everyone keeps asking is how.
In 2014, Messi was a different player physically.
He was plagued by recurring vomiting episodes during matches and persistent soft-tissue injuries.
His diet at the time included chocolate, fizzy drinks, and regular fast food.
His then-manager Pep Guardiola told him bluntly that if he wanted to extend his career at the highest level, pizza and carbonated drinks had to go permanently.
Messi listened, and he has not touched either in 12 years.
He began working with Italian nutritionist Giuliano Poser, who stripped the diet back to five core categories: water, extra virgin olive oil, whole grains, fresh fruit, and fresh vegetables.
Refined sugars and processed flour were eliminated entirely.
His daily intake now revolves around lean proteins - particularly roasted chicken with root vegetables, prepared with minimal salt and a drizzle of olive oil, which he has described as his favourite meal.
He eats fresh fish regularly, uses olive oil as his primary cooking fat, and focuses on low-GI carbohydrates that release energy slowly rather than spiking blood sugar.
The results were almost immediate.
Within months of overhauling his diet, the vomiting stopped, the soft-tissue injuries became less frequent, and his body composition visibly changed.
It is a different approach to the one taken by Haaland, whose own World Cup campaign has been fuelled by a 6,000-calorie daily intake built around beef heart, liver, and a self-blended 'magic potion' of raw milk, spinach, and kale.
Where Haaland eats like a Viking, Messi eats like a nutritionist's case study.
Both are level on seven tournament goals so far.
The first thing Messi does every morning - before food, before training, before anything - is prepare yerba mate.
It is an Argentine tradition, but for Messi it borders on the sacred.
He drinks it from a gourd through a metal straw called a bombilla, and has done so every single day since he was a child in Rosario.
"Yerba mate is part of my life," he has said.
"It has always been. Since I was a child. I can't imagine a morning without it."
The drink delivers caffeine and theobromine - the same compound found in dark chocolate - providing a smooth, sustained energy release without the crash associated with coffee.
It has travelled with him from Rosario to Barcelona to Paris to Miami, and now across the United States as Argentina chase a second consecutive World Cup title.
Messi does not wake at 4am. He does not post topless gym selfies. He is not Cristiano Ronaldo.
Ronaldo, who at 41 is the oldest outfield player at this World Cup and the first man to score in six separate tournaments, is famous for training six times a week, sleeping in five precisely timed 90-minute cycles, and maintaining a biological age reportedly assessed at 28.9 years old.
His approach is pure optimisation - every hour of every day engineered for performance.
Messi's is the opposite.
He typically rises between 8 and 9am, eats breakfast with his wife Antonela and their three sons - Thiago, Mateo, and Ciro - and arrives at training mid-morning.
His sessions are built around functional movements designed to maintain the speed, agility, and balance that define his game.
His programme includes multi-directional speed drills, linear sprinting work, strength training focused on his core, back, glutes, and lower body, and extensive flexibility and mobility sessions.
He finishes every training day with 10 to 20 minutes of stretching.
The emphasis is on injury prevention rather than muscle building.
At 5ft 7in and around 72kg, Messi's advantage has never been physical power - it is his low center of gravity, his explosive first step, and his ability to change direction at full speed.
His training is designed entirely to protect those attributes.
His former Barcelona physio Juanjo Brau, who worked with him for over a decade, built daily prehab and rehab sessions into his schedule that were as non-negotiable as training itself.
After training, Messi follows a structured recovery protocol that includes contrast water therapy - alternating between hot and cold water immersion - and soft tissue work with his physiotherapy team.
At Inter Miami, his recovery load is managed based on match frequency and training intensity.
His evenings are deliberately low-key.
He eats a light dinner of lean protein and vegetables, spends time with his family, and goes to bed early.
He has described family time not as a luxury but as a genuine recovery tool - a mental reset that has sustained him over a career spanning more than two decades.
Guardiola once explained Messi's most misunderstood habit: walking.
During matches, Messi spends long stretches barely moving, which casual viewers interpret as laziness. Guardiola saw the opposite.
"Don't try to describe him - watch him," Guardiola said.
"He walks and reads, then acts."
Analysts have since confirmed that during those walking phases, Messi performs more visual scans of the pitch than almost any other player, absorbing positional data before exploding into action. It is not rest. It is preparation.
The numbers border on absurd.
Messi scored a hat trick in Argentina's 3-0 opening win over Algeria - his first ever at a World Cup and a performance that earned a perfect 10 rating from WhoScored.
He added two more against Austria to break Miroslav Klose's all-time World Cup goalscoring record, then came off the bench against Jordan to curl in a free kick and seal a perfect group stage campaign.
In the round of 32 against Cape Verde, he scored his seventh of the tournament in the first half and then played all 120 minutes as Argentina were pushed to extra time by the African debutants before eventually winning 3-2.
He scored again from a corner-kick assist situation, taking his tally to eight and his career total to 20 - two clear of Kylian Mbappé in second place.
He has scored in eight consecutive World Cup matches.
Twelve goal contributions in knockout rounds.
He has scored more World Cup goals after turning 35 (nine) than Diego Maradona, Rivaldo, Thierry Henry, and Romário scored in their entire careers.
His manager Lionel Scaloni has run out of ways to describe it.
"What you're seeing, I'm seeing the same thing," Scaloni said after the Jordan game.
"It's a little bit of an uncomfortable situation every single time people ask because I no longer know what to say."
Egypt are up first.
Today. Mohamed Salah against Lionel Messi in Atlanta - two of the greatest forwards of their generation, meeting in the World Cup knockout rounds for the first time.
The Opta supercomputer gives Argentina a 69 per cent chance of winning in normal time.
Beyond that, the bracket opens up in a way that could produce one of the great World Cup storylines.
A quarter-final could pit Messi's Argentina against one of the tournament's surprise packages. A semi-final could mean England or Norway - and Haaland, the only player currently matching Messi's output, after knocking Brazil out with a second-half brace in the round of 16.
A final could mean France and a rematch of 2022 - widely considered the greatest World Cup final ever played.
Messi has not confirmed whether this will be his last World Cup.
He has not needed to. At 39, with 20 goals, eight straight scoring appearances, and a diet that has not included a slice of pizza since 2014, the answer appears to be that he will stop when his body tells him to.
It has not told him yet.
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