Lionel Messi's 2022 World Cup shirts sell for £6m - falling short of record
Lionel Messi's shirt from the FIFA World Cup final in 2022 has been sold - along with the those he wore throughout the tournament - for a whopping £6.12million at auction.
However, that falls far short of the record for sports memorabilia with two from baseball and basketball selling for as much as £3m more. Messi's jerseys went under the hammer in New York on Thursday afternoon, with a reserve offer of £6.12m ($7.8m) made for the shirts.
Surprisingly, Messi's six jerseys even sold less than one worn by his compatriot from a World Cup in the 1980's - with Diego Maradona's 1986 top selling for £7.28 million. Here, the Mirror Sport team has taken a look at the top five sports memorabilia/items sold at auction, with Messi's six jerseys just scraping the final spot.
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1. Rookie Mickey Mantle trading card (£9.88m)
Mickey Mantle may not be the first name you think of when it comes to legendary baseball players, but his 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311 card is a different story - still being the highest-sold sports item of all-time. This card is considered the holy grail of baseball cards and one recently sold for a whopping $12.5m at Heritage Auctions. The exact number of these rare #311 cards left in the world isn't known, but given it's the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia ever sold, any future finds are sure to be worth a fortune.
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2. Michael Jordan's 1998 NBA Game 1 jersey (£7.91m)
Basketball legend Michael Jordan, who made the Chicago Bulls a household name in the 80s and 90s, had a standout moment in the 1998 NBA finals. Known as 'The Last Dance' season due to the team's impending split, Game 1 against the Utah Jazz ended in a surprising loss. However, Jordan bounced back, leading the Bulls to victory. The jersey he wore during that pivotal game recently fetched a whopping $10.091m at a Sotheby's auction - the same place in which Messi's had been sold - setting a record for the most expensive sports jersey ever.
3. Diego Maradona's 1986 World Cup shirt (£7.28m)
Back in 1986 Diego Maradona scored THAT amazing goal, followed by THAT controversial goal against England. Maradona went on an incredible solo run to score, before quite clearly scoring with his hand just four minutes later to knock England out of the World Cup. After that match, Maradona swapped shirts with England's Steve Hodge. That famous shirt has been sold a few times, and last year it went for a whopping $9.28m at an auction.
4. Pierre de Coubertin's Olympic Games Manifesto (£6.90m)
While you might be amazed by the sports gear, jerseys, or collectible cards that appear at high-value auctions, something as simple as a few scribbled pages might not grab your attention. However, Pierre de Coubertin's manuscript from 1892 certainly did. This document outlined Coubertin's idea for a modern-day Olympic Games, which he presented in an inspiring speech at the Sorbonne. Without Coubertin's persuasive argument, we wouldn't be cheering for our home team every four years. In 2019, Sotheby's auctioned off the original manuscript for a staggering $8.8m.
5. Six Lionel Messi's shirts from World Cup: £6.12 million
Lionel Messi won a World Cup in what was his last with Argentina, as he heads towards the end of what has been a sensational career - perhaps the best in the history of the sport. The shirts that were sold were worn by Messi in two group stage matches, as well as the round of 16 game, quarterfinals, semi-finals and even in the finals against France - where he scored twice excluding a third in the penalty shootout to help his nation lift the trophy.
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