In Argentina's recent match against Bolivia, Lionel Messi bagged his 58th career hat-trick, adding yet another chapter to his already storied career.

While this impressive milestone ranks Messi second among active players for career hat-tricks, it's Cristiano Ronaldo who leads the way. The Portuguese icon has recorded a remarkable 66 hat-tricks over the course of his career.

However, as impressive as both Messi's and Ronaldo's numbers are, they still fall well short of the all-time record for hat-tricks.

That record is held by Erwin Helmchen, a legendary German goalscorer with an astonishing 144 career hat-tricks. Helmchen, who scored a staggering 989 goals during his career from 1923 to 1949 (with a near-decade pause due to World War II), remains in a league of his own. His remarkable feats include two matches where he scored 8 goals, three instances of netting 7, and 10 occasions where he delivered 6 goals in a single game, a feat known as a "double hat-trick."

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